F6, it is despairing to see nurseries whether for fish or for humans in such sad states, obviously we are on the latter here .. the first below just to show that at least the effect of climate change on the GBR has been recognized by the Australian government .. the intro and link just below is from a google search list ..
All elements of the Reef ecosystem are exposed to, and at risk from, the impacts of climate change, the effects of which are already being seen. There is expected to be flow-on impacts for communities and industries.
CAIRNS, Australia, Jul 18 2012 (IPS) - The world’s largest and best protected coral reef will be doomed by Australia’s unprecedented scale of planned coal and gas development, experts say.
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest reef system, with 3,000 reefs running 2,300 km along most of the state of Queensland’s coast. Credit: Nickj/CC BY 3.0
This threat to the Great Barrier Reef is so serious that UNESCO recently announced it may downgrade the reef’s prestigious designation as a World Heritage Site to a “World Heritage Site in Danger”.
“That would be a big blow to our tourism industry, which generates nearly six billion dollars a year and employs over 50,000 people,” said Terry Hughes, director of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Australia on the last day of the 12th International Coral Reef Symposium (ICRS) here in Cairns, Australia.
“It’s immoral to keep building new coal mines when we know so much about climate change and its impacts,” Hughes told IPS.
Newly-elected Queensland Premier Campbell Newman responded to the UNESCO announcement by reportedly saying, “We are in the coal business. If you want decent hospitals, schools and police on the beat, we all need to understand that.”
Both the state and federal government collect substantial royalties from the mining sector.
The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest reef system, with 3,000 reefs running 2,300 km along most of the state of Queensland’s coast. Although protected as a marine park for decades, coral cover has declined 50 percent since 1960s due to impacts from land-based pollution including fertiliser and mine runoff, bleaching from warmer waters and outbreaks of crown of thorns starfish that eats coral.
Australia is the world’s biggest coal exporter and Queensland is a major mining and export region, shipping 156 million tonnes annually, mostly to Asian markets. Now there are proposals to expand that output sixfold to nearly one billion tonnes annually by 2020. Related IPS Articles
Local Control Revives Depleted Fisheries Scientists Declare State of Emergency for World’s Coral Reefs
That enormous amount is equivalent to the collective heft of nearly every motor vehicle on the planet – some 800 to 900 million vehicles in all.
The carbon footprint from that much coal means another 1.8 billion tonnes of climate-damaging carbon dioxide (CO2) would be added to the atmosphere annually. The world’s best scientists say reductions in emissions of the billions of tonnes of CO2 are needed before 2020 to prevent catastrophic climate change.
Climate change has already warmed the oceans 0.5C degrees and made them 25 to 30 percent more acidic, impacting the health of reefs around the world. That will only worsen with every tonne of coal burned.
All of those tonnes of coal dug from the Queensland outback are loaded on huge coal ships that have to navigate through or around the Great Barrier Reef.
India’s Adani Group recently announced it will spend six billion dollars to build Queensland’s biggest coal mine in the state’s central region, including a new town and a runway for fly-in, fly-out workers. It will also build a 350 km railway to connect to new port facilities on the coast to ship some 60 million tonnes a year back to India.
Other Indian miners, along with a number of Chinese mining interests, have locked up an estimated 20 billion tonnes of coal resources in central Queensland. Australian mining companies are also expanding their operations.
Existing coal ports will need major expansions and new ports have been proposed up and down the Queensland coast. The number of coal ships needed to move all that coal is projected to jump from the present 1,700 to more than 10,000 by 2020.
In 2010, the coal ship “Shen Neng” took a short cut and ran aground on the reef, leaving a three-km scar, an oil spill and trail of toxins from its anti-fouling paint. Clean-up costs for such accidents could top 100 million dollars and it would be difficult to get shipping companies registered in foreign countries to pay the costs, officials told IPS.
Coal may be king in Queensland, but liquefied natural gas (LNG) is the big new player. In fact, Australia is home to more than 70 percent of LNG projects in the world.
Tens of billions of dollars are being invested in hundreds of drilling sites, including hydraulic fracturing operations to tap the extensive deposits of coal-seam gas (also known as coal-bed methane). Delivering the gas for exports means new pipelines and giant processing plants to turn the methane into LNG for shipping on special ships with high-pressure tanks to Japan, Korea and other Asian markets.
Gas also has a big carbon footprint. IPS reported earlier this year that U.S. scientific studies show that coal-seam gas can have higher CO2 emissions than coal when emissions from mining, transmission and burning is included.
Four LNG processing plants with port facilities have been proposed at the rapidly expanding coal port of Gladstone in central Queensland. Extensive dredging is already underway and Australia’s minister of the environment has approved the ocean dumping of millions of tonnes of dredged material inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park boundaries, Hughes said.
Even without the dumping, satellite images have shown dredging sediment, including toxic metals, drifting up to 35 kilometres out to sea. Mass fish kills have been recently been reported in the area and commercial fishers are blaming it on the dredging activity.
Duongs, sea turtles, dolphins and other marine species are not doing well south of Cook Town, where most of the coastal development has occurred so far, said Alana Grech, a researcher at James Cook University. New ports and industrial development would have a negative impact, especially if done in the relatively pristine north, Grech told IPS.
“We must protect the coastline and reef north of Cook Town. We can’t have new ports up and down the coast because it will further fragment the habitat,” she said. “We’re at a crossroads here. Some hard decisions will have to be made.”
The cumulative affects of development, pollution, shipping and climate change are very worrying, said Laurence McCook, science co-ordinator of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which has a mandate to manage and protect the reef. To date no cumulative impact assessment has ever been done. That was one of the main criticisms UNESCO made, McCook said.
Until now, the potential impacts of each LNG terminal, coal mine and port expansion proposal has been only examined in isolation without ever considering the cumulative impacts. Some of these have already received government approvals to proceed.
Australia is now doing a “strategic assessment” to determine the potential cumulative impacts of new and proposed development and comply with UNESCO’s request that this should be done before any new development. The assessment is expected to be completed by 2014.
“If we can’t protect the reefs here in Australia, who can protect reefs anywhere?” said McCourt.
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The post i am replying to is linked as the bottom link in this one of yours ..
which sadly paints a very discouraging picture for many states of the USA. One wonders what it will it take for climate statistic sceptics (deniers) to understand the severity of the climate change situation .. of the human contribution to it.
In the most comprehensive study yet of Caribbean coral reefs, scientists have discovered that the 50 to 60 percent coral cover present in the 1970s has plummeted to less than 10 percent.
“I’m sad to tell you it’s a dire picture,” Carl Gustaf Lundin, director of IUCN’s Global Marine and Polar Programme, said at a news briefing Friday at the World Conservation Congress in Jeju Island, South Korea.
Called “Nature’s Olympics,” the conference will explore five environmental themes over five days. Today’s theme is Nature+ Climate, which focuses on how to combat global warming.
Much of the decline is caused by a massive die-off of sea urchins in the 1970s—possibly due to disease. Without these reef grazers—the “cows in the field” that keep vegetation in check—the number of algae and grasses have skyrocketed, dominating reefs and pushing corals aside, Lundin said.
What’s more, overfishing of grazer species such as parrotfish or surgeonfish is allowing more algae to take over and outcompete the coral, said Ameer Abdulla, IUCN senior advisor on Marine Biodiversity and Conservation Science.
“Coral reef communities are just like human communities—there are different roles that are fundamental to keeping the system going,” Abdulla said.
For example, if all the engineers were taken out of a human society, that would affect how the society functions.
The same phenomenon is happening with the loss of the Caribbean’s grazers, he said.
Global Warming Also at Play
The scientists also said that warmer water—often caused by hurricanes blowing through—have harmed reefs. When the water gets too hot, algae that live inside coral, called zooxanthellae—abandon their hosts, causing the coral themselves to bleach and eventually die.
Though some reefs can bounce back from such periods of warmer water, notably in the Indian Ocean, ”We have heating happening with much higher frequency and for longer duration,” Lundin told National Geographic News.
For instance, some 500-to-a-thousand-year-old corals in the Indian Ocean have died due to warmer water.
“We know with some certainty we haven’t had this happen for a thousand years, that’s a clear indication that something’s afoot,” Lundin said.
“For those that are very skeptical of what’s happening with climate change, I would say reality is not in their favor.”
Caribbean Collapse a First—Others May Follow
Corals are vital for many reasons, from boosting tourism dollars to local communities and even buffeting islands themselves from powerful storm surges, Lundin said.
The good news is that there are ways to protect the remaining 10 percent of Caribbean corals.
“The urgency of improving management is certainly there—our message is we need to encourage the people who are the custodians of the resources to take charge. We do know a lot about what one can do,” said Lundin.
For instance, putting in place marine protected areas can reduce the pressure of overfishing. Governments can also work with local fishers to maintain their livelihoods, for instance by raising the value of individual fish so that the fishers catch fewer animals.
The bottom line, Abdulla said, is that “the Caribbean system is one of first systems to experience collapse—it’s something that will happen across the globe if human use of coral reefs continues as it is.”
Christine Dell’Amore, environment writer-editor for National Geographic News, is reporting from the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Jeju Island, South Korea.
UNESCO’s Great Barrier Reef report: experts respond - 4 June 2012, 2.53pm AEST
A damning UNESCO report has criticised management of the Great Barrier Reef and warned that the area could be downgraded to a world heritage site “in danger” unless Australia makes major changes to its supervision. The report expresses “extreme concern” at the rapid rate of coastal development at sites… Author
Justin Norrie
-------- Justin Norrie - Editor, The Conversation
The Conversation provides independent analysis and commentary from academics and researchers.
We are funded by CSIRO, Melbourne, Monash, RMIT, UTS, UWA, Canberra, CDU, Deakin, Flinders, Griffith, La Trobe, Murdoch, QUT, Swinburne, UniSA, UTAS, UWS and VU. --------
The Great Barrier Reef … in danger of a downgrade. Flickr/eutrophication&hypoxia
A damning UNESCO report .. http://whc.unesco.org/archive/2012/whc12-36com-7BAdde.pdf .. has criticised management of the Great Barrier Reef and warned that the area could be downgraded to a world heritage site “in danger” unless Australia makes major changes to its supervision.
The report expresses “extreme concern” at the rapid rate of coastal development at sites such as Gladstone and Curtis Island – for liquefied natural gas plants – and says no new developments that could affect the reef should go ahead until a thorough assessment of the area is carried out.
Colin Hunt, Honorary Fellow in Economics at the University of Queensland
UNESCO has come out with a very strong report here. It’s almost a threat. There are no sanctions that UNESCO can apply to Australia, of course, but sanctions can certainly come from the Australian public if there’s a downgrade to the listing, because there’ll be a huge fallout if that happens.
It seems now that there’s a change of policy underway – from a situation where there were a number of ports on the Queensland coast that were vying with each other to be chosen for new gas developments, to one in which there will be fewer developments so as to reduce the impact. Developments will inevitably go ahead, but the fewer the better. That’s the view of the UNESCO committee and I think that will be the policy of the Queensland State Government.
What is also inevitable is that these developments will be in the world heritage area, which is under the jurisdiction of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority – in other words the Australian Government and Environment Minister Tony Burke. The Commonwealth will therefore have the last say. It can, on the grounds of biodiversity, put very strong conditions on aspects of port developments, or even knock them back altogether.
The site, which is home to the largest coral reef system on the planet, received world heritage listing in 1981. Flickr/ Paul from www.Castaways.com.au
Under the reduction-of-red-tape agreement between the State and Commonwealth, the Commonwealth is supposed to cede some of the comments on environmental impact statements to the states. But in this case, it’s very much in the interest of the Commonwealth Government to satisfy the requirements of the UNESCO committee, because if the status of the world heritage area is downgraded to “in danger”, it will cause an enormous backlash in the community. So it’s going to be fascinating to see whether we can have the growth as promised by coal exports and at the same time preserve our listing of the Great Barrier Reef world heritage area.
The Queensland Government will suffer too if there’s a downgrade. But don’t forget that it’s just been elected, and it has a big majority, whereas the federal election is coming up next June and Labor is behind in the polls.
I have a big stake in this because I was one of the architects at the 25-year strategic plan for the Great Barrier Reef, in 1994, which was accepted by the State and Commonwealth Governments at that time. We had tourism operators, we had miners, we had farmers, we had Aboriginal traditional owners – we had all those stakeholders and we spent three years coming up with a plan which has guided the management of the reef up until now. Everything so far has been plain sailing, barring some runoff from farms and the impact of climate change. But now we have this, which is the first time in almost 20 years that we’ve had a major problem with development. It’s a turning point, a huge issue that isn’t going to go away, and it’s a bit of a worry that the Federal Government is likely to be changing in a year’s time. What will happen after that?
You have to go back and look at the history of the reef, and the protests when they wanted to mine it in the 1960s, Judith Wright’s .. http://www.judithwrightcentre.com/01_cms/details.asp?ID=66 .. huge international campaign, the listing in 1981 – all those things with a massive following by millions of Australians. I’m sure that Tony Burke is well aware of all of it all.
Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, Director of the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland
UNESCO is clearly very concerned about the rapid coastal development, particularly the development of gas processing facilities within the World Heritage area. The recommendation is that we take a much more cautious approach given how much is at stake with respect to the Great Barrier Reef.
The World Heritage report also warns that some of the developments in the pipeline will pose a serious risk to the Great Barrier Reef, and hence will lead to the UNESCO World Heritage committee classifying the world heritage reef system has “in danger”.
Friends of the Earth activists protest against the dredging at Gladstone Harbour. They say the dredging is degrading the reef. AAP/Friends Of The Earth
Clearly UNESCO is very concerned by the rate of the transformative activities in the Gladstone and Curtis Island areas. I think they have posed some important questions about how such activities have been approved. But given that these activities are in full swing, it is now time to reflect on how we proceed with future developments.
The major challenge here is how we balance the development of some sections of the Queensland coastline with the huge benefits we get from the Great Barrier Reef as one of our leading environmental assets and tourist destinations.
The risk of an “in danger” listing has substantial ramifications. For example, what will such a change do to tourism in Queensland in terms of our identity and brand? Will as many people come to Australia if they are told that the World Heritage region is in danger?
This is why the next episode is critical.
The extraction of gas and minerals is by definition a temporary activity, while the Great Barrier Reef and its tourist industries – given good environmental management – are potentially sustainable forever, delivering benefits to many generations of Queenslanders. To let the first destroy the second doesn’t make a lot of economic sense.
Consequently, the Queensland Government’s recent statements .. http://www.news.com.au/national/unesco-slams-great-barrier-reef-management-youve-got-eight-months-to-fix-it/story-e6frfkw0-1226381188474 .. that we have to rapidly extract minimal resources in this fashion to pay for hospitals and keep the lights on is inaccurate at best. The tourism industry provides enormous value to Queensland on an ongoing basis. This is really what will keep the lights on, the hospitals functioning and our coastal communities prosperous. And for a very long time after the conclusion of mining activities and other temporary activities.
F6, it is despairing to see nurseries whether for fish or for humans in such sad states, obviously we are on the latter here .. the first below just to show that at least the effect of climate change on the GBR has been recognized by the Australian government .. the intro and link just below is from a google search list ..
Big wet fear for Reef from refinery | The Courier-Mail Posted on June 25, 2012 by Sue
QUEENSLAND is one wet season away from an environment disaster with the potential to destroy sections of the Great Barrier Reef.
State Environment Minister Andrew Powell and his federal counterpart Tony Burke yesterday confirmed a serious environmental threat is developing at Townsville’s Yabulu Nickel Refinery.
Tailing ponds at the Queensland Nickel refinery, a company owned by Queensland’s richest man, Clive Palmer, are filled with contaminated water and a risk of collapse due to unusually high amounts of wet weather in recent years.
“What we have is a potential for an environmental disaster,” Mr Powell said yesterday.
Mr Powell said his department had been on the front foot in recent weeks, working with Queensland Nickel to resolve the problem.
Mr Palmer is believed to have taken a personal interest in the issue, meeting with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority in Townsville to hammer out a solution.
But GBRMPA have so far refused Queensland Nickel‘s request to dump the treated water into Halifax Bay, fearing damage to the Reef and a potential fish kill.
Under the law, Queensland Nickel have a right to dump the water immediately if their swollen ponds reach a critical level and become a danger to human safety.
Mr Burke told the ABC in Townsville yesterday there was a concentration of metals, nutrients and nitrogen in the tailings pond water that was unacceptable in a marine park.
“The quality of the water is way below the standards of the Great Barrier Reef,” he said.
“The potential impact of this could be extraordinary.”
Mr Burke said while the situation had not yet reached the critical stage, a prolonged period of heavy rain could prompt a crisis point, he said.
The north’s wet season gets under way in October and in recent years has produced well-above-average rain falls.
Mr Burke said he agreed with GBRMPA that the tailings pond water should not all be dumped at once because of its potentially devastating impact on marine life.
A slow release strategy might be one compromise to resolve the situation, he said.
Queensland Greens spokeswoman Dr Libby Connors said that although Mr Palmer argued the jobs of more than 1000 employees at Yabulu were at stake, the state’s tourism industry also needed consideration.
“Is the Premier (Campbell Newman) going to stand up for the 60,000 staff employed in tourism in this state?
“The centrepiece of our tourism industry is the World Heritage status of the Great Barrier Reef.”
A Queensland Nickel spokesman said they had always acted under the law and it is understood the company is working with GBRMPA to find an acceptable solution.
via Big wet fear for Reef from refinery | The Courier-Mail. This entry was posted in GREAT BARRIER REEF UPDATES and tagged Dr Libby Connors, GBRMPA, Great Barrier Reef, Halifax Bay, Mr Burke, Mr Palmer, Mr Powell, Premier Campbell Newman, Queensland Nickel, State Environment Minister Andrew Powell, Tony Burke, Townsville Yabulu Nickel Refinery, World Heritage by Sue. Bookmark the permalink.
In this Jan. 23, 2006 file photo provided by Centre of Marine Studies, The University of Queensland, fish swim amongst bleached coral near the Keppel Islands in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Ocean acidification has emerged as one of the biggest threats to coral reefs across the world, acting as the "osteoporosis of the sea" and threatening everything from food security to tourism to livelihoods, the head of a U.S. scientific agency said Monday, July 9, 2012. 7/9/2012 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/48118757/ns/us_news-environment/ [with comments]
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