The coral reef has been bleached white due to algae being released in warmer waters
(Picture: PA Media)Australia’s government has said it will fight a recommendation by a UN panel that the Great Barrier Reef should be classified as a world heritage site “in danger”.
The country’s environment minister Tanya Plibersek has pledged to lobby to stop protective measures being implemented after UNESCO said the world's biggest coral reef ecosystem has been hit significantly by warmer oceans as a result of climate change.
Waters have been so warm for four of the past seven years that the corals have expelled the colourful algae that live within their tissue and turned white in a process called bleaching. This has even happened during the La Nina phenomenon this year, which usually delivers cooler ocean temperatures.
The United Nations (UN) released a report on Monday to warn the reef is in peril without "ambitious, rapid and sustained" climate action and recommended it for endangered status.
This could see greater measures put in place to protect what has been a UNESCO (The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) world heritage site since 1981. Australian leaders have always worried stringent measures will hit the tourist attraction which generates £3.6 billion annually for the economy.
The report was compiled after an inspection in March, which Labor member Ms Plibersek said was still under the regime of the previous conservative-leaning Liberal government. She argued that the new government, led by Anthony Albanese, is already taking action.
Ms Plibersek told reporters: “We'll very clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way.
“The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as at risk is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action and, since the change of government, both of those things have happened.”
The Albanese government has committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 43 per cent below the 2005 level by 2030 - a big increase from the regime led by the climate action shy regime of Scott Morrison.
The independent Great Barrier Reef Foundation agreed with Ms Plibersek to say the Great Barrier Reef is “not on its last legs”.
