The Great Barrier Reef has decayed to such an intensity it should be registered as a world heritage site “in risk,” a United Nations commission said Tuesday — indicating critical resentment from the Australian administration.
UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee suggested the listing, understanding the environment change as the driving agent behind the ruins of the world’s most extensive coral reef. It requested for Australia to “instantly” address warnings from climate development.
Australia, which draws millions of snorkeling travelers and beachgoers each year, pledged Tuesday to uphold any difference of rank that could damage its tourism industry or understand the U.N. step in to adopt more robust standards to conquer the country’s greenhouse gas radiations. The embodiment will be decided on at the committee’s conference in China next month.
Australian Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley said the state will “firmly reject” the proposal, claiming the administration was spending $3 billion in reef protection.
Ley said executives in Canberra were “surprised” by the progress and attacked UNESCO for backflipping on earlier promises the reef would not be listed endangered.
“The Great Barrier Reef is the best-managed reef in the world and this draft proposal has been made without examining the reef first hand, and without the latest information,” Ley said in a statement.
In a visit with UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay, Ley said she “made it obvious that we will challenge this flawed strategy, one that has been considered without satisfactory discussion.”
Traversing approximately 133,000 square miles (345,000 square kilometers) and shelter to more than 1,500 varieties of fish and 411 kinds of hard corals, the Great Barrier Reef is a necessary aquatic ecosystem.
It also provides $4.8 billion yearly to Australia’s prosperity and sustains 64,000 businesses, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.
But the reef’s long-term durability has come into issue. It has experienced three destructive bleaching cases since 2015, caused by above-average ocean warmth as the burning of fossil fuels warms the planet.
UNESCO’s List of World Heritage in Danger has 53 listings, which combine natural wonders and man-made places. Jerusalem’s Old City was annexed in 1982, while Aleppo — the Syrian city attacked by airstrikes — made the record in 2013.