As the end of Week Three of the federal election campaign drew near a little plausible deniability was obviously called for………..
News.com.au, 27 May 2016:
THE FEDERAL government has had the nation axed from a UNESCO report on climate change and world heritage sites.
Every reference to Australia has been scrapped from the final version of the 87-page report, which detailed the impact of global warming on 31 natural and man-made world heritage sites around the world.
The initial “World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate” report included a key chapter on the Great Barrier Reef. It also referenced Kakadu and the Tasmanian forests.
But the Australian Department of the Environment made sure every mention of Australia was removed, even though it lists other sites in the Asia Pacific region and says coral reefs are “particularly vulnerable” to climate change.
This means Australia is the only inhabited continent on the planet with no mentions in the report.
In a statement to news.com.au, the Environment Department confirmed it asked for references to Australia to be removed, saying it would have a negative impact on tourism:
“Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of world heritage properties impacted on tourism.
“The department was concerned that the framing of the report confused two issues — the world heritage status of the sites and risks arising from climate change and tourism……
Here is the Department’s full statement:
The World Heritage Centre initiated contact with the Department of the Environment in early 2016 for our views on aspects of this report.
The Department expressed concern that giving the report the title “Destinations at risk” had the potential to cause considerable confusion. In particular, the World Heritage Committee had only six months earlier decided not to include the Great Barrier Reef on the in-danger list and commended Australia for the Reef 2050 Plan.
The Department was concerned that the framing of the report confused two issues – the world heritage status of the sites and risks arising from climate change and tourism. It is the World Heritage Committee, not its secretariat (the World Heritage Centre), which is properly charged with examining the status of World Heritage sites.
Recent experience in Australia had shown that negative commentary about the status of World Heritage properties impacted on tourism.
The Department indicated it did not support any of Australia’s World Heritage properties being included in such a publication for the reasons outlined above.
The Department of the Environment conveyed these concerns through Australia’s Ambassador to UNESCO.
The Department did not brief the Minister on this issue. [my red bolding]
I’m not impressed Team Turnbull! Not only was it a foolish move when the world's media has been reporting on the effects of climate change on Australia's reef systems - there is no way that a government department is going to pressure the United Nations to alter a report without relevant ministers right up to the foreign minister and prime minister being aware.
Neither was lead author of this United Nations report, Adam Markham, the deputy director of climate and energy with the Union of Concerned Scientists impressed by the Turnbull Government's actions.
He issued this statement on behalf of the UCS:
He issued this statement on behalf of the UCS:
Adam
Markham, deputy director, Climate &
Energy Program | May 26, 2016, 3:06 pm EDT
A
lot has changed since Captain Cook became the first European to try to navigate
the Great Barrier Reef in 1770. It was the reports of Cook and naturalist
Joseph Banks on their return to England that first alerted the scientific world
to the existence of this biological marvel. The Great Barrier Reef is now one
of the world’s most important coastal and marine tourism areas, but its future
is at risk, and climate change is the primary long-term threat.
A
World Heritage site since 1981, the Great Barrier Reef is one of the world’s
most complex and diverse ecosystems, with at least 400 species of hard coral,
150 species of soft corals and sea fans, and more than 2,900 individual reefs
and some of the most important seagrass meadows in the world. It teems with
marine life of all sorts, including more than 1600 fish species, seabirds,
seahorses, whales, dolphins, crocodiles, dugongs and endangered green turtles.
The reef extends for 2,300km along the coast of Queensland in Northeast
Australia and has evolved over a period of 15,000 years. The region is
important for the indigenous heritage of First Australians who are Traditional
Owners including Aboriginal and Torres Straits Islander people. Climate change
threatens hunting and fishing as well as other traditional and cultural
practices. Some sacred sites are also at risk for the more than 70 Traditional
Owner groups for whom natural resources are inseparable from cultural identity.
Tourism
is an important economic driver
Today,
tourism (including touring, diving, beaches, sailing, fishing and cruising) is
the most important economic sector in the GBR communities, contributing $5.2 billion dollarsto the Australian economy
in 2012 and supporting 64,000 jobs, or about 90% of the total economic activity
in the region. Visitors spent nearly 43 million total nights in the GBR region
in 2012, of which nearly 2 million nights were on the reef, mainly at Cairns
and the Whitsunday Islands. Direct reef-related tourism alone contributes 4,800
jobs. Approximately 500 commercial boats operate bringing tourists out to dive
and snorkel on the reef, and there can be negative impacts associated with
this, including damage from fuel spills and walking and dropping anchors on
fragile corals. Tourism infrastructure, along with other coastal developments,
can cause habitat degradation and damaging pollution and sediment run-off.
Australia is the world’s fourth largest coal producer and debate currently
swirls around the risks embodied in plans to expand coal mining and coal shipping near the Great Barrier Reef.
Higher
temperatures and ocean acidification threaten reefs
The biggest threat to the GBR today, and to its ecosystems
services, biodiversity, heritage values and tourism economy, is climate change,
including warming sea temperatures, accelerating rates of sea level rise,
changing weather patterns and ocean acidification. Coral reefs worldwide are
being directly impacted
by warming waters and ocean acidification, and climate change is exacerbating
other localized stresses. Ocean acidification is occurring because of increased
levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. A significant portion of this CO2
is being absorbed by the oceans and the resulting increases in seawater acidity
reduces the capacity of some marine life, such as corals, to build their
calcium carbonate based skeletons. Significant drops in coral growth rate have
been recorded in the last two decades for massive Porites corals on
the Great Barrier Reef.
Worst
ever coral bleaching
Other
significant threats to the reef include coastal development, agricultural
run-off pollution, port-based shipping activities, illegal fishing and
outbreaks of the coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish. Assailed by multiple
threats, the status of the GBR has been assessed as being poor and
deteriorating. Half of its coral cover has been lost over the last three
decades. Unusually high sea temperatures have caused nine mass coral bleaching
events on the GBR since 1979, and until this year, the worst had been in 1998 and 2002 (Great Barrier
Reef Marine Park Authority 2012, Steffen et al 2009, Hughes et al 2015). But
higher water temperatures and a severe El Nino have been pushing corals into
the danger zone all over the world in 2015-16, and the Great Barrier Reef is
currently suffering the most severe bleaching episode ever recorded.
Coral
bleaching occurs when higher than usual maximum temperatures disrupt the
relationship between corals and the photosynthetic zooxanthelae algae that live
in their tissues in a vital and mutually beneficial biological relationship.
Bleaching can kill corals, but depending on the severity of the impact and
local factors they can also recover. The same is true for coral damage from
storms, but damaged or bleached corals and reefs need time to recover. All
indications are that bleaching events will become more frequent and tropical
storms more intense with continued global warming, and that this combined with
a continued trend in warming water and ocean acidification will be massively
detrimental to the GBR. The current bleaching episode has affected more than
90% of the reef, with the worst damage being in the northern region where surveys have confirmed 50% mortality in some places.
Without
global efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions coupled with local management
responses to increase resilience, current projections suggest that coral cover
could decline to 5-10% of the GBR by the early 2020s from 28% in 1985—a
potential loss of 80% in just 40 years. Similar fears are associated
with one of the other keystone ecosystems of the GBR, seagrass meadows
representing 20% of the world’s 72 seagrass species. These shallow-water
habitats provide vital nursery areas for fish and shrimps, critical food
resources for turtles and dugongs, and act as carbon sinks, sequestering
organic carbon in marine sediments. The combination of agricultural runoff,
fishery impacts and climate change may exceed seagrass beds’ natural ability to adapt. Sea turtles
too are at risk from climate change as high temperatures and sea level rise
impact their breeding and nesting beaches.
A
need for action
Spurred
by the direct evidence of climate change already impacting the GBR, degradation
of the reefs and the likelihood of much worse to come, the Australian
government has begun to plan and implement actions to reduce the risk of future
damage. At the core of the adaptation strategy are efforts to build ecosystem
resilience, fill gaps in scientific knowledge, and monitor environmental,
social and economic impacts of climate change. Collaborative management
strategies are also being developed and tested with local communities,
Traditional Owners, as well as with business and industry. The GBR was also the
first World Heritage property for which a comprehensive Tourism and Climate
Change Action Strategy was developed. The strategy recognizes the vital
importance that a healthy GBR ecosystem plays for the Australian economy and
that the tourism industry must quickly come to grips with the problem.
Recommended actions include reducing direct impacts and greenhouse gas
emissions from tourism companies operating on or near the reef; increased training
and awareness for guides and operators; helping to raise public understanding
of the threat, and; supporting scientific research and monitoring activities.
The plan also calls for the industry itself to plan adaptive responses for
declining reef conditions and to contribute to risk management strategies for
climate disasters.
Despite
these measures, international concern has continued to grow, however, that
without a comprehensive response more in keeping with the scale of the threat,
the GBR’s extraordinary biodiversity and natural beauty may lose its World
Heritage values. The World Conservation Outlook 2014 published by IUCN
(International Union for Conservation of Nature) assessed the status of the
World Heritage values of the GBR as of “high concern” and experiencing a
deteriorating trend. The most recent strategy from the Australian government,
the Reef 2050 Long-term Sustainability plan addressed this issue head on and
has been designed to “ensure the Great Barrier Reef continues to improve on its
Outstanding Universal Value every decade between now and 2050 to be a natural
wonder for each successive generation to come”.
The full UNESCO report, World Heritage and Tourism in a Changing Climate, can be read here.
