UNESCO flags risk to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

UNESCO flags risk to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef

Subject: Environment

Context:

• Australia on Friday avoided having the Great Barrier Reef listed as an endangered world heritage site by UNESCO, despite extensive climate change-spurred damage to the ecosystem’s corals.
• The move by the UN body has faced criticism by environmental activists as 21-country World Heritage Committee on Friday ignored a scientific assessment from the UN’s science and culture organisation, Unesco, that the reef was clearly in danger from climate change and so should be placed on the list.

The World Heritage Convention

• The World Heritage Convention is one of the most important global conservation instruments Created in 1972, the primary mission of the Convention is to identify and protect the world’s natural and cultural heritage considered to be of Outstanding Universal Value.
• The convention defines the kinds of natural or cultural sites that can be included on the World Heritage List.
• The 191 nations that have signed the convention have pledged to conserve their World Heritage Sites.
• The World Heritage Committee compiles another list of sites it considers to be “in danger” of losing their heritage status.
• This time last year, UNESCO threatened to list the Great Barrier Reef as in danger, amid controversy over a plan to dump dredged sediment from a port expansion near the reef. Declining water quality, climate change and coastal development were also cited as threats to the reef’s health.
• The “in danger” list is designed to tell the international community about the conditions that threaten the very characteristics for which a property was added to the World Heritage List in the first place, and to encourage governments to take action to protect the sites.
• A country can ask for one of its sites to be listed in order to receive help to address the threats
• The listing would enable the World Heritage Committee to allocate funds to help protect a site. It would also alert the international community who might contribute funds or technical expertise to save an endangered site.
• If a site loses the characteristics which determined its inscription on the World Heritage List, it could be deleted from both the List of World Heritage in Danger and the main World Heritage List.
• It has only happened twice.

About Great Barrier Reef:

• It is the world’ s most extensive and spectacular coral reef ecosystem composed of over 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands.
• The reef is located in the Coral Sea (North-East Coast), off the coast of Queensland, Australia.
• It can be seen from outer space and is the world’s biggest single structure made by living organisms.
• This reef structure is composed of and built by billions of tiny organisms, known as coral polyps.
• It was selected as a World Heritage Site in 1981.

Coral Reef

• Largest Coral Reef Area:
  • Indonesia has the largest coral reef area in the world.
  • India, Maldives, Sri Lanka and Chagos have the maximum coral reefs in South Asia.
  • The Great Barrier Reef of the Queensland coast of Australia is the largest aggregation of coral reefs.
• Coral Reef Areas in India:
  • India has four coral reef areas: Gulf of Mannar, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Lakshadweep islands and the Gulf of Kutch.