Australia Not everyone is convinced by new protection for Great Barrier Reef

ON the face of it, one would think it good news. I’m talking about the Australian government’s recent announcement that it will spend A$1 billion ($700m) on new protection measures for the Great Barrier Reef, seven months after the UN threatened to put the site on its “danger list” because of the damage caused by climate change and development.

It was last year that Australia became embroiled in a tussle with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco,) which had planned to put the reef on its danger list to prompt action to protect the 2,300km living structure from climate change and development.

Research has found that the reef’s ability to recover from damage caused by warming global temperatures has been severely compromised, triggering a crash in coral replenishment.

Already under pressure over his handling of the country’s worst Covid-19 outbreak fuelled by the Omicron variant, Australian prime minister Scott Morrison said that the investment will help protect about 64,000 jobs in Queensland that depend on the reef.

“We are backing the health of the reef and the economic future of tourism operators, hospitality providers and Queensland communities that are at the heart of the reef economy,” he said in a statement.

The additional funding to be used over the next nine years will add to an existing A$2bn ($1.4bn) package designed to shield the reef from environmental threats over the next three decades the government says.

So far, so good you could be forgiven for thinking. But not everyone is convinced that the news is as good as it sounds, with environmental group Greenpeace saying it was “astounding” to see the government planning to allocate more funds while ignoring climate change.

Some, though, were a little more colourful in their criticism with Terry Hughes, a professor at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, insisting the plan amounted to “utter bullshit” and calling it merely a Band-Aid “to protect fossil fuels”. Hughes wrote on Twitter: “Australia is a laggard on climate change – still encouraging more fossil fuels, and scientists know that we can’t ‘build a healthy resilient reef in the face of climate change’ without tackling rising emissions.”

The war of words between government and environmentalists, it would seem, is set to rumble on. It’s probably the last thing needed at a time when speed is of the essence to save this wonder of the natural world.