Snorkel diplomacy has delivered the Morrison government a stay of execution on the Great Barrier Reef being declared in danger.
But a fierce campaign waged by opponents has exposed the lengths to which green groups will go in their bid to usurp national control of climate action.
The decade-long battle to list the reef as “in danger” has become a contest over sovereign rights in an age of hyperactive environmental globalism.
Hollywood actors, ocean explorers, business poseurs, green groups, and fringe politicians have lined up against national governments seeking to safeguard natural justice in the UN process.
The reef is a potent symbol of a bigger challenge. Like every other of the world’s reefs, it has been doomed by scientists as unable to survive global warming.
Australia’s most authoritative reef reports have told UNESCO that despite billions of dollars being spent, water quality targets are not being met and the long-term outlook for the GBR has gone from bad to very bad.
More recent reports from the Australian Institute of Marine Science, that coral cover on the reef is back up to levels of three decades ago, have been dismissed as a blip in an inevitable decline.
For the Morrison government, already struggling to convince the world it is a serious partner in decarbonization, the stakes are huge.
Australia claimed it was blindsided by attempts to put the GBR on the World Heritage in Danger list at the World Heritage Committee’s 44th session in Fuzhou, China.
For UNESCO, the reef is a perfect vehicle to make a larger point.
It is beautiful and internationally significant. Declaring the reef in danger would give the UN a potent rallying focus in its call for action on climate change.
In the end, snorkel diplomacy has bought the Australian government another 12 months.
Publication of a draft recommendation to list the reef as in danger sparked a frantic lobbying effort both for and against.
As lobby groups fired off letters of encouragement to the WHC, Canberra arranged for key ambassadors to visit the reef to see its condition for themselves.
Going into Friday’s meeting, 12 of the World Heritage Committee’s 21 member countries had signed an amendment avoiding an in danger listing this year: Bahrain, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Ethiopia, Hungary, Mali, Nigeria, Oman, Russian Federation, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saudi Arabia, Spain, and Uganda. Australia could not propose the amendment but could still vote.
Countries on the committee that did not support the amendment were Brazil, China, Egypt, Guatemala, Kyrgyzstan, Norway, South Africa, and Thailand.
With a two-thirds majority needed for the amendment to pass, Australia needed one other country to change or abstain.
The amendment deleted a phrase saying that the WHC “considers that the property is facing ascertained or potential danger” and it “decides to inscribe the Great Barrier Reef (Australia) on the List of World Heritage in Danger”.
The revised statement said Australia “agreed to a joint World Heritage Centre/IUCN Reactive Monitoring mission”.
The amendment extended to December 2022 the timeline for an updated report.
Australia clearly is not out of hot water on the issue yet.
Read more at The Australian ($)
What they don’t need is to have the UN getting involved in this whole thing and despite what we have been told by the Eco-Freaks and others The Earth Is Not Fragile