(Sydney) Australia on Friday unveiled a 1 billion Australian dollar program to protect the Great Barrier Reef, which has been badly damaged by climate change, in the hope of preventing this unique ecosystem from being removed from the list of the a UNESCO World Heritage Site, but campaigners remain skeptical.
Posted at 9:04 p.m.
Updated at 9:58 p.m.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison announced the nine-year, A$1 billion (C$900 million) plan, months after he narrowly avoided the world’s largest coral complex being listed as a site. endangered by UNESCO.
“We support the health of the reef and the economic future of tourism operators, hotel providers and communities in Queensland who are at the heart of the reef economy,” Mr Morrison said.
The move comes ahead of general elections in May, in which Scott Morrison will need to win key Queensland seats near the reef to stay in power.
Already in 2015, when the UN threatened to downgrade the status of the Great Barrier Reef, a World Heritage Site since 1981, Australia launched a multi-billion dollar investment plan to combat the deterioration of the reef.
But since then, the complex has suffered badly after three very serious episodes of coral bleaching, in 2016, 2017 and 2020.
Whitening is a withering phenomenon that results in discoloration. It is caused by the rise in water temperature – a consequence of global warming – which leads to the expulsion of the symbiotic algae that give the coral its bright color.
Bleaching has affected 98% of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef since 1998, sparing only a tiny portion of the reef, according to a recent study.
Australia’s Conservative government has so far refused to set a short-term emissions reduction target and has pledged to remain one of the world’s largest exporters of gas and coal.
” A plaster ”
However, Australians are overwhelmingly in favor of action to limit climate change, having suffered a series of disasters made worse by global warming, from bushfires to droughts and floods.
According to a 2021 poll by the Lowy Institute in Sydney, 60% of Australians believe that “global warming is a serious and urgent problem”.
No less than eight in ten Australians support the goal of carbon neutrality by 2050.
But the economy still relies heavily on fossil fuels and political parties receive significant funding from donors linked to the coal and gas industries.
For the pressure group Climate Council, the new investment plan is “a band-aid on a wooden leg”.
“Unless emissions are reduced sharply over the next ten years, the situation of the barrier will only deteriorate,” explains Lesley Hughes, member of this NGO and professor of biology at Macquarie University.
“Distributing money for the Great Barrier Reef with one hand, while funding the very fossil fuel industry that is causing devastating climate impacts like marine heat waves and bleaching corals, means that they aggravate the very problem they claim to want to solve”.
A large part of the government’s new investment plan will be devoted to preventing the pollution of reefs by agricultural runoff.
About a quarter of the funds will be earmarked for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority “to reduce threats from acanthaster starfish”, which feed on coral.