The updated plan for improving water quality on the Great Barrier Reef still doesn’t address the need to curb intensively farmed crops such as sugar cane, and to enforce existing environmental laws.
The government has convened 16 experts to help deliver its plan to save the Great Barrier Reef.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Global Change Institute, University of Queensland
The government’s plan to save the Great Barrier Reef hinges on hitting a series of pollution and conservation targets within just a few years. A new expert panel will advise on how best to get there.
It’s still too early to declare that it’s blue skies for the Great Barrier Reef.
Underwater Earth/Catlin Seaview Survey/Wikimedia Commons
Whether it’s on the official “in danger” list or not, the Great Barrier Reef is clearly under threat. UNESCO has placed its faith in Australia, but without urgent action the problems will not go away.
The Curtis Island gas precinct is one of the biggest developments along the Great Barrier Reef coast.
AAP Image/Greenpeace
The coast alongside the Great Barrier Reef is home to ports, farms, holiday resorts, and more than a million people. It all puts pressure on the Reef, and it’s time for some firms plans to manage it.
When World Heritage sites are under threat, like Florida’s Everglades National Park, they are added to the List of World Heritage in Danger.
Flickr/slack12
The United Nations is set to decide whether to add the Great Barrier Reef to the List of World Heritage in Danger. But what is the list, and what does it mean for the places that are on it?
A flood plume containing sediments, nutrients and pesticides flowing onto the Great Barrier Reef from Bundaberg.
AAP Image/James Cook University
Successive plans to curb the sediments, nutrients and pesticides flowing into the waters around the Great Barrier Reef have fallen short, leaving the corals that call the reef home highly vulnerable.
The World Heritage Committee has called for a comprehensive assessment not just of the threats to the Great Barrier Reef, but of their cumulative effect.
AAP Image/Australian Institute for Marine Science, Ray Berkelmans
The government says it has met all of the recommendations for safeguarding the Great Barrier Reef. But a close reading of the dozens of UN recommendations shows that many have been only partly fulfilled.