Australia’s environment minister said Tuesday her government will lobby against UNESCO adding the Great Barrier Reef to a list of endangered World Heritage sites. Officials from the U.N. cultural agency and the International Union for Conservation of Nature released a report on Monday warning that without “ambitious, rapid and sustained” climate action, the world’s largest coral reef is in peril. The report, which recommended shifting the Great Barrier Reef to endangered status, followed a 10-day mission in March to the famed reef system off Australia’s northeast coast that was added to the World Heritage list in 1981. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the report was a reflection on Australia’s previous conservative government, which was voted out of office in May elections after nine years in power. She said the new center-left Labor Party government has already addressed several of the report’s concerns, including action on climate change. “We’ll very clearly make the point to UNESCO that there is no need to single the Great Barrier Reef out in this way" with an endangered listing, Plibersek told reporters. read more: Coral reefs' survival at stake: Unesco “The reason that UNESCO in the past has singled out a place as at risk is because they wanted to see greater government investment or greater government action and, since the change of government, both of those things have happened,” she added. The new government has legislated to commit Australia to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 43% below the 2005 level by 2030. The previous government only committed to a reduction of 26% to 28% by the end of the decade. Plibersek said her government has also committed 1.2 billion Australian dollars ($798 million) to caring for the reef and has canceled the previous government’s plans to build two major dams in Queensland state that would have affected the reef’s water quality. “If the Great Barrier Reef is in danger, then every coral reef in the world is in danger,” Plibersek said. “If this World Heritage site is in danger, then most World Heritage sites around the world are in danger from climate change.” The report said Australia’s federal government and Queensland authorities should adopt more ambitious emission reduction targets in line with international efforts to limit future warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) since pre-industrial times. Read more: Great Barrier Reef enters crucial period in coral bleaching The minor Greens party, which wants Australia to slash its emissions by 75% by the end of the decade, called for the government to do more to fight climate change in light of the report. Jodie Rummer, a marine biologist at James Cook University in Townville who has worked on the reef for more than a decade, supported calls for Australia to aim for a 75% emissions reduction. “We are taking action, but that action needs to be much more rapid and much more urgent,” Rummer told Australian Broadcasting Corp. “We cannot claim to be doing all we can for the reef at this point. We aren’t. We need to be sending that message to the rest of the world that we are doing everything that we possibly can for the reef and that means we need to take urgent action on emissions immediately,” she added. Feedback from Australian officials, both at the federal and state level, will be reviewed before Paris-based UNESCO makes any official proposal to the World Heritage committee. In July last year, the previous Australian government garnered enough international support to defer an attempt by UNESCO to downgrade the reef’s status to “in danger” because of damage caused by climate change. The Great Barrier Reef accounts for around 10% of the world’s coral reef ecosystems. The network of more than 2,500 reefs covers 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles). Australian government scientists reported in May that more than 90% of Great Barrier Reef coral surveyed in the latest year was bleached, in the fourth such mass event in seven years. Bleaching is caused by global warming, but this is the reef’s first bleaching event during a La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with cooler Pacific Ocean temperatures, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Authority said in its annual report. Bleaching in 2016, 2017 and 2020 damaged two-thirds of the coral. Coral bleaches as a response to heat stress and scientists hope most of the coral will recover from the latest event.

The Chinese host of this year’s meeting of the U.N. World Heritage Committee has defended the body’s proposal to label the Great Barrier Reef as “in danger” against Australian government suspicion that China influenced the finding for political reasons. The committee, which is meeting both virtually and in the Chinese city of Fuzhou for the next two weeks, will consider the draft decision on Friday. Read: China dinosaur footprint fossil named after Doraemon's "Nobita" “Australia, as a member state of the World Heritage Committee, should ... attach importance to the opinions of the advisory bodies and earnestly fulfill the duty of World Heritage protection instead of making groundless accusations against other states,” said Tian Xuejun, the Chinese vice minister of education and the president of this year’s session, on Sunday. The UNESCO committee will consider adding new sites to the World Heritage list, taking some off and adding others to the in-danger category. A draft decision to put Venice on the in-danger list prompted the Italian government to ban cruise ships from the lagoon city in a bid to avoid the designation. Tian, speaking at the first news conference since the meetings opened last Friday, said the Great Barrier Reef proposal was based on data from Australia and recommendations from an advisory body. Australian Environment Minister Susan Ley, who is in Europe lobbying UNESCO delegates against supporting the in-danger listing, was not immediately available to comment on the Chinese criticism. Her office on Monday released a report by the government-funded Australian Institute of Marine Science that indicated widespread recovery of the reef’s coral. Monitoring by the institute found coral cover had increased during the respite from severe weather over the last year. “The release of the full report underlines our view that the World Heritage Committee proposed listing had not been based on the latest information,” Ley said in a statement. Read:India cranking up border infrastructure to narrow gap with China Australia reacted angrily when the draft was released last month. “This decision was flawed. Clearly there were politics behind it,” Ley said, without mentioning China by name. Relations between the two nations have soured in recent years, with Australia blocking Chinese technology and investment in key infrastructure, and China using tariffs and other measures to reduce its imports from Australia. Australia was warned in 2014 that an in-danger listing was being considered for the Great Barrier Reef, which was designated a world heritage site in 1981. The draft decision said that Australia’s long-term plan for the reef, a network of 2,500 reefs covering 348,000 square kilometers (134,000 square miles), “requires stronger and clearer commitments, in particular towards urgently countering the effects of climate change.” “We acknowledge very much the work which has been done in Australia, but our text in the draft decision ... is a proposal for putting the site on the list of world heritage in danger because of the threats which were identified,” said Mechtild Roessler, the UNESCO director of the World Heritage Committee. Read:Australian court upholds ban on most international travel Ernesto Ottone Ramírez, the assistant director-general for culture at UNESCO, said that an in-danger listing should be viewed as a collective call for action from all the member states. “It’s something that should be seen as something positive and not, as what we heard from some of the authorities in other countries, as a punishment,” he said, joining the news conference from Paris. “It’s how we preserve our heritage for future generations.”

An aerial survey of the Great Barrier Reef shows coral bleaching is sweeping across the area off the east of Australia for the third time in five years.

The Great Barrier Reef is facing a critical period of heat stress over the coming weeks following the most widespread coral bleaching the natural wonder has ever endured, scientists said Friday.

Higher than average ocean temperatures have put Australia's iconic Great Barrier Reef on the brink of a severe coral bleaching event, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) has warned on Tuesday.