The Australian government has allocated 500 million Australian dollars (379 million US dollars) to save the Great Barrier Reef from climate change, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull announced here on Sunday.
A UNESCO committee omitted Australia's Great Barrier Reef from its list of world heritage sites it considers to be in danger, a move the government welcomed but conservationists questioned.
Ongoing coral bleaching on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef could cost the region more than a million international and domestic tourists a year -- and up to 1 billion Australian dollars ($760 million) in lost revenue.
The world is set to notch up a new heat record in 2016 after a sizzling 2015 as global warming stokes more floods and rising sea levels, the UN weather agency said.
One of the most popular reef spots at the Great Barrier Reef in Australia has almost fully recovered from the worst coral bleaching ever known in recent history, a NewsCorp report said on Monday.
What exactly happens to coral during a bleaching event?
Recently, researchers in Australia employed a microscope, camera and smart tablet to find out how the organisms respond to heat stress. It's the first time scientists have filmed the behaviors specific to bleaching.
The smell of death has inundated Australia's Great Barrier Reef, scientists and environmentalists say, as the ghostly white bleached coral is inundated by an algal slime.
Water temperatures in the Australian state of Tasmania have been up to four degrees Celsius hotter than average over the past three months, and scientists have blamed the region's on-going extreme weather on rampant climate change.
Scientists warned that low level coral bleaching are occurring on
Australia's Great Barrier Reef due to high sea surface temperatures, and
it could be exacerbated if the area continues to experience still and
calm conditions for the next few weeks.......Great Barrier Reef hit by coral bleaching
As Australia braces for a potentially devastating coral bleaching event in coming months on the Great Barrier Reef, the Bureau of Meteorology has today confirmed that 2015 was the country’s fifth hottest year on record.
A new publication commissioned by WWF-Australia says if the current outbreak of crown of thorns Starfish (CoTS) follows previous patterns it will likely be the worst on record.
Australia has ordered a ban on dumping
dredge waste on most of the Great Barrier Reef, the environment minister
said on Saturday (Jan 24), as part of a push to stop the UN declaring
the site in danger.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef remains under threat despite efforts to
rein in major sources of damage to the World Heritage-listed icon, the
government said on Tuesday.
Canberra released a five-yearly
review of the reef and moves to protect it, to address concerns raised
by UNESCO and persuade the world body not to put the key tourist
attraction on its "in danger" list next year. "Even with the recent
management initiatives to reduce threats and improve resilience, the
overall outlook for the Great Barrier Reef is poor, has worsened since
2009 and is expected to further deteriorate," the government said in its
outlook report.
Australia Thursday called a decision by UNESCO to defer listing the
Great Barrier Reef as in danger "a win for logic," but environmentalists
said it was a final warning.
The UN cultural agency on Wednesday
said the reef could be put on a list of endangered World Heritage Sites
if more was not done to protect it.
It voiced alarm at a
"serious decline in the condition" of the reef, and said "a business as
usual approach to managing the property is not an option."
Australia
was given until February 1 next year to submit a report on what it was
doing to protect the natural wonder. The Queensland state government saw
the deferral as "a tick of approval."
The United Nations world heritage body UNESCO will decide on Wednesday
whether to list Australia's Great Barrier Reef as "in danger."
Concerns were raised in May over the decision to allow dredging near the reef, the ABC reported.
UNESCO
recommended adding the reef to the World Heritage in Danger list in
2015, unless the Queensland Government took further action to protect
it.
The committee is meeting this week in Doha and Queensland
Environment Minister Andrew Powell is also there to convince UNESCO the
reef is not in danger.
UNESCO on Thursday condemned a decision to allow the
dumping of dredge waste in Great Barrier Reef waters and recommended the
Australian marine park be considered for inclusion on the World
Heritage in Danger list.
The decision in January to allow three million cubic metres of dredge
waste to be disposed of in park waters followed a decision by the
government to give the green light to a major coal port expansion for
India's Adani Group on the reef coast in December. Conservationists warn it could hasten the demise of the reef, which
is already considered to be in "poor" health, with dredging smothering
corals and seagrasses and exposing them to poisons and elevated levels
of nutrients.
Could the government have the 2013 addition to the Tasmanian World Heritage Area revoked, asks John Pickrell. - AUSTRALIA’S WORLD HERITAGE areas are having a tough
time. In 2013 it was revealed that the Great Barrier Reef had lost half
its coral cover since the 1980s. Now, due to a series of port
developments for coal and gas exports, it is hanging under the threat of
ending up on the “List of World Heritage in Danger”, the precursor to
World Heritage status being removed.
It would be embarrassing
for this to happen in one of the world’s wealthiest nations, one that
holds under its guardianship perhaps the most famous natural World
Heritage Area (WHA) on the planet.