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A United Nations climate report released Monday paints a dire picture of the Great Barrier Reef’s future as the effects of climate change are fast changing the coral reef. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report (IPCC), which states bluntly that the Great Barrier Reef faces severe climate change impacts and is in crisis, citing frequent and severe coral bleaching due to rising ocean temperatures, has much to worry the world. The worst bleaching event, in 2016, affected over 90% of the reef, and a punishing succession of bleaching incidents has left the northern and middle portion of the reef system in a “highly degraded state,” the report said.
The Great Barrier Reef is the largest living structure on the planet — so large, in fact, that it is the only living thing on earth visible from space. It covers more than 2,300 km (1,400 miles). It is home to more tropical fish species, as well as dolphins, whales and birds, and even giant, century old clams. It contributed AU$6.4 Billion ($4.6 Billion) to the economy each year before the pandemic.It is home to around 64,000 jobs, thanks largely to tourism.
According to the IPCC it is almost certain that bleaching will continue along reefs. Even more concerning is the fact that the report suggests that it may be too late for bleaching to stop completely. Even if the global community achieves its goal of limiting future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times, that still wouldn’t be sufficient to prevent more frequent mass bleaching events, though it may reduce their occurrence, the IPCC found.
The report predicts that ocean warming and marine heatwaves will cause the loss and degradation of tropical shallow coral reefs, leading to the “widespread destruction” of coral reef ecosystems. The report points to three previous mass bleaching events from 2016 to 2020 that caused a significant coral loss, and warns that there have been “mass mortality” of some coral species.
Tony Fontes, a diver and instructor on the Great Barrier Reef, describes bleaching as a wildfire under water. Fontes, who retired recently after 40 years of being a Great Barrier Reef diving instructor, recalled diving on bleached reefs and swimming in water that was milky-white due to dead coral tissue. He would come out covered in slime.
“You sit on the boat trying to wash it off and you just realize you’ve just swum across a reef that a couple of weeks ago was full of life and vibrant and now a bushfire has gone through it and the coral is dead, and the rest of the marine life will just have to move on or die off,” he says. “It’s a really, really sad, heart-wrenching experience.”
Despite the threat from its own backyard, Australia is still behind other wealthy countries in terms of its greenhouse gas emission reduction performance and pledges. A climate think tank ranked Australia last January as the worst climate performer in comparison to other developed countries, since the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was signed to limit global warming.
The issue is politically fraught in Australia, which is one of the world’s largest exporters of coal and liquified natural gas, and one of the highest greenhouse gas emitters per capita because of its heavy reliance on coal-fired power. Last month, the government pledged to spend another AU$1 billion over nine years improving the reef’s health, but critics argued that the money would do nothing to address rising ocean temperatures, the main threat to coral.
Inaction has economic and ecological consequences.: If bleaching continues, the IPCC projects that 10,000 jobs would be lost annually and AU$1billion of revenue would be lost due to declines in tourism.
Scott Heron, a James Cook University physics professor and expert in reef science, estimates that coral reefs are used by around a billion people. According to Scott Heron, failure to immediately reduce greenhouse gas emissions could have catastrophic consequences for humanity.
“It’s going to affect real people and real people’s lives,” Heron says. “It’s going to make a massive change to not just people in Australia, but people who subsist on reef services. And so we’re really putting this into a frame of endangering human life.”
The report warns that climate change will cause an increase in heat-related deaths in Australia and the extinction of some animal species. The IPCC stated that Koalas face local extinctions because of rising temperatures and increased drought. According to the IPCC, rising sea levels and storm waves led to the recent extinction Bramble Cay melomys, a rodent that lived in a remote area of the northern Great Barrier Reef.
The frequency and severity of dangerous wildfire conditions are already increasing, due in part to climate change, the IPCC said, citing the catastrophic “Black Summer” fires of late 2019 and early 2020 that killed at least 33 people and destroyed more than 3,000 homes. Even Australia’s famed eucalyptus trees, which are naturally resilient to the country’s seasonal fires, may not be able to withstand the ferocity and frequency of the predicted blazes, which could lead to the decimation of forests, the IPCC warned.
“We’re seeing conditions which really weren’t projected for some decades … and yet they’re appearing pretty much now, and so to some extent, we could well be underestimating the risks associated with things like fires,” says IPCC vice-chair Mark Howden, director of the Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions at the Australian National University.
Despite the grim outlook, Howden urges Australians to keep their heads up and not lose heart. He encourages them to look for solutions and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The report also includes extensive lists on climate adaptation strategies like improving building standards to ensure that homes are cooler during potentially fatal heatwaves.
“Does this report identify whole areas Australians should be concerned about? Absolutely, and it would be hard to understate the comprehensiveness and significance of those impacts,” Howden says. “Does it also portray a whole series of things that we can take action on which take the sting out of the worst-case scenarios in the future? Absolutely.”
