Climate change poses the biggest threat to World Heritage sites, a United Nations body said this week.
Among the one-third of such sites that are in trouble, a new report has listed the Great Barrier Reef of Australia as critical, with climate change the biggest threat to the complex ecosystem.
Moreover, management of the reef itself has done all it can, the report said. In 2017, the most recent report, it was listed as of "significant concern."
It's one of 18 World Heritage sites worldwide that are declining due to big-picture environmental factors, the International Union for Conservation of Nature's (IUCN) said in its 2020 World Heritage Outlook report. The 1,430-mile-long reef off the northeast coast of Australia is the largest such system in the world, with 400 types of coral, 1,500 species of fish and 4,000 types of mollusk, according to the IUCN.
That has overtaken invasive species as a top threat to natural World Heritage sites overall, the IUCN said in a statement.
© DAN PELEDFILE - In this Nov. 25, 2016 photo, fish swim along the edges of a coral reef off Great Keppel Island in Australia.
FILE - In this Nov. 25, 2016 photo, fish swim along the edges of a coral reef off Great Keppel Island in Australia. (DAN PELED/)
There are 252 such sites in all, and the annual report tracks which ones are well protected long-term by current conservation measures. The Great Barrier Reef is one of 83 natural World Heritage sites directly threatened by climate change, the IUCN said. Others include the Everglades of Florida.
The coral is being bleached by a combination of ocean warming, acidification and extreme weather, the IUCN said. The values that put the Great Barrier Reef on the list in the first place have been "declining significantly," the IUCN said, with dramatic declines due to bleaching in 2016, 17 and 2020.
"Some of the activities causing a threat to the values of the site can be influenced by the management authorities, such as fishing and coastal development," the report's summary said. "Other pressures cannot be addressed at the site level, such as climate change, which is recognized as the greatest threat to the Outstanding Universal Value of the site. While individual decisions and management approaches appear in themselves adequate, the cumulative impacts of many decisions, on top of the legacy impacts and impending impacts of climate change, are of concern."
This despite the fact that the Great Barrier Reef's 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan has provided a framework for preserving and managing the site, while confronting threats to its well-being.
"Progress towards achieving some of the targets has been slow so far and it has not been possible yet to stop the decline," the IUCN said, noting that "overall the site's protection and management capacity are often cited as being among the best in the world."
"Natural World Heritage sites are amongst the world's most precious places, and we owe it to future generations to protect them," said IUCN Director General Bruno Oberle said in a statement. "The IUCN World Heritage Outlook 3 reveals the damage climate change is wreaking on natural World Heritage, from shrinking glaciers to coral bleaching to increasingly frequent and severe fires and droughts. As the international community defines new objectives to conserve biodiversity, this report signals the urgency with which we must tackle environmental challenges together at the planetary scale."
The COVID pandemic has also caused conditions to deteriorate, the IUCN said, with "early evidence" showing that although lower tourist numbers are easing pressure on some ecosystems, but closing tourist sites is lowering revenue for protection, and "illegal activities are on the rise with fewer staff deployed to prevent them."