Thursday 9 April 2015

Judgment day

Nguồn tin: nguontinviet.com



THE turquoise waters around Lady Elliot Island, a speck on the southern edge of the Great Barrier Reef, look pristine. Coral, turtles, manta rays and brightly-coloured fish thrive. They are lucky. Formed from a cay of ancient coral, the island sits about 80km from the Australian state of Queensland: just far enough into the Pacific Ocean to avoid being affected by human activities that have helped bring the reef to a crisis.


UNESCO named it a World Heritage Site in 1981. Nowhere else, the organisation says, contains biodiversity to match its 400 types of coral, 1,500 fish species and myriad other forms of ocean life. But in June it will decide whether to add it to the short list of world heritage sites—just 46 out of 1,007—it regards as in danger.


In the past 30 years half the reef’s coral has disappeared. Marine scientists say people are largely responsible for its decline. Rising sea temperatures and acidification, both linked to global warming; and nutrients and pesticides washed from farms into its waters, help to feed coral-eating crown-of-thorns starfish (see box). The effect on coral skeletons, says John Gunn of the Australian Institute of Marine Science, is similar to that of osteoporosis in humans.


Cyclones have added to the stress. They lashed the reef long before Captain Cook’s ship, the Endeavour, snagged on its coral in 1770, 18 years before Europeans settled Australia. But the reef always proved resilient enough to recover. In the past ten years, though, six cyclones of Category 5, the highest level, have struck it. The previous one of such intensity in the area was in 1918.


Each has damaged coral and polluted the surrounding water with run-off from farms and cities. Between them the reef has had little time to recover. For Russell Reichelt of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, a federal body charged with protecting it, the “burning question” is whether this is climate change in action.


An Australian government report to the UN in January said that protecting the reef would take a “concerted international effort” to reduce climate change. But the country’s own foot-dragging on climate action makes it a poor advocate. Tony Abbott, the prime minister, pronounced coal “good for humanity” last October when he opened a new mine in a Queensland coal-mining region inland from the reef; Queensland is one of the world’s biggest coal exporters. The remark bolstered his reputation as a climate-change sceptic.


It was a boom in resource exports that prompted the World Heritage Committee to put Australia on notice of the possible change to the Great Barrier Reef’s status four years ago. Dredging waste at Gladstone, a southern reef port, was being dumped in waters within the world heritage site to allow some of the world’s biggest exploration companies to start exporting liquefied natural gas. A bigger row followed over dredging at Abbot Point, another reef port, linked to coal projects by Adani and GVK, two Indian companies. In late 2013, the government approved a plan to dump about 3m cubic metres of that port’s waste inside the reef’s waters.


Public outcry forced a rethink. On March 21st Mr Abbott flew to Hamilton Island on the reef to launch Australia’s final pitch to the UN to keep it off the danger list. Together with the Queensland state government, his administration will spend about A$2 billion ($1.6 billion) over the next ten years to sustain the reef. Dumping dredge waste from port expansions in reef waters has now been banned.


An “in danger” listing could hit tourism to the reef, which is worth about A$5 billion a year—to say nothing of the country’s self-esteem. Australians consider the reef to be a national icon. There are signs of hope. Australia’s marine science institute has tracked coral re-growing in several places where environmental pressure has eased, says Mr Gunn. Restoring the whole reef to Lady Elliot Island’s immaculate state will be a bigger challenge.





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