GS PAPER II: Conservation, environmental pollution and degradation, environmental impact assessment.

Context: The Great Barrier Reef should be added to a list of “in danger” World Heritage Sites a UN committee recommended, prompting an angry response from Australia, which said it had been blindsided by the move and blamed political interference.

• The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation committee, which sits under UNESCO, said the world’s biggest coral reef system should be added to the list due to the impact of climate change.
• Australia has for years been battling to keep the Great Barrier Reef, a major tourist attraction that supports thousands of jobs, off the “in danger” list.
• In 2015, UNESCO noted the outlook for the reef was poor but kept the site’s status unchanged. Since then, scientists say it has suffered three major coral bleaching events due to severe marine heatwaves.
• The recommendation from UNESCO is clear and unequivocal that the Australian Government is not doing enough to protect our greatest natural asset, especially on climate change
• Australia reliance on coal-fired power makes it one of the world’s largest carbon emitters per capita.

What are corals?

• Corals exhibit characteristics of plants, but are marine animals that are related to jellyfish and anemones.
• Coral polyps are tiny, soft-bodied organisms. At their base is a hard, protective limestone skeleton called a calicle, which forms the structure of coral reefs.
• Reefs begin when a polyp attaches itself to a rock on the seafloor, then divides, or buds, into thousands of clones.
• The polyp calicles connect to one another, creating a colony that acts as a single organism.
• As colonies grow over hundreds and thousands of years, they join with other colonies, and become reefs.
• There are soft corals as well, which are non-reef-building, and resemble bushes, grasses, trees.

Why are coral reefs important?

• Coral reefs are like underwater cities that support marine life.
• According to the UN Environment programme, they provide at least half a billion people around the world with food security and livelihoods.
• Coral reefs also act as ‘wave breaks’ between the sea and the coastline and minimise the impact of sea erosion.
• In India, they are protected in the same way as the tiger or elephant, under Schedule I of the Wildlife Protection Act (WPA), 1972.

What poses a threat to coral reefs?

• Climate change remains one of the biggest threats to corals.
• This threat has been visible in the “bleaching” of corals.
• Bleaching is a process during which corals, under stress from warm weather, expel the algae that give corals their brilliant colours and live in their tissues and produce their food.
• The Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia, a UNESCO World Heritage site and home to one of the largest collections of coral reefs on the planet, has suffered six mass bleaching events due to warmer than normal ocean temperatures: in 1998, 2002, 2006, 2016, 2017, and now 2020.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/great-barrier-reef-should-be-listed-as-in-danger-un-committee-recommends/article34897826.ece?homepage=true

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