SYDNEY, July 19, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – The agency that manages the Great Barrier
Reef broke ranks with Australia’s conservative government to call for the
“strongest and fastest possible action” against climate change to save the
world heritage marine wonder.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, a government body, said in a
study released this week that an urgent reduction in greenhouse gas
emissions, both nationally and globally, was needed to protect the future of
the reef.
Rising sea temperatures linked to climate change have killed off large
areas of coral in the 2,300-kilometre (1,400-mile) reef, a UN-listed World
Heritage site, that suffered back-to-back coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017.
Australia’s emissions of greenhouse gases have risen for the past four
years under the recently re-elected government of Prime Minister Scott
Morrison, which backs the country’s huge coal industry.
It has refused to enshrine emission reduction targets agreed to under the
Paris climate accords in its formal energy policy and experts question
whether it can meet its commitment to cut greenhouse gas output by at least
26 percent below 2005 levels by 2030.
But the government’s own agency warned in its report that “only the
strongest and fastest possible action on climate change will reduce the risks
and limit the impacts of climate change on the reef.”
“Further loss of coral is inevitable and can be minimised by limiting
global temperature increase to the maximum extent possible,” it said.
The reef authority said that current gas emission trends, if not curbed,
could see the deadly bleaching events happen twice per decade by around 2035
and they could become annual before the middle of the century.
“If bleaching becomes more frequent and more intense, there will not be
enough time for reefs to recover and persist as coral-dominated systems in
their current form,” it said.