‘Best managed reef in the world’ down the drain

What’s happening around the Park makes a mockery of our ‘best management’ approach

By David Salt

Is it hubris, arrogance or duplicity when the country’s Minister for the Environment can claim, almost in the same breath, that the Great Barrier Reef is ‘the best managed coral reef ecosystem in the world’ but that the science-based outlook for the Reef’s ecosystem has slipped from ‘poor’ to ‘very poor’? I’m not joking, read her press release (it came out last Friday). How does ‘best management’ produce this outcome?

Well, it might surprise some of our readers to hear that I don’t actually disagree with the claim that the GBR is one of the world’s better managed reefs. It’s one of the world’s biggest marine parks with a significant portion of it off limits to all forms of development (around a third) thanks to the application of world’s best-practice systematic conservation planning. And the management of this world-heritage listed park is supported by a range of relatively well resourced institutions (GBRMPA, AIMS and the Centre of Excellence for Reef Studies to name three).

We monitor it well and in many areas we have led the world on reef science. And that’s as it should be because Australian’s love the Reef and expect our elected representatives to look after it. Economists tell us it’s worth looking after because it employs 64,000 people, generates $6.4 billion each year and has a total asset value of $56 billion.

The shadow of climate change

The trouble is, the looming threats overshadowing the Reef cannot be addressed by best-practice management within the Park’s boundaries. They originate outside of the Park and the Government claims it has limited power to address them.

In 2012, the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) released a major peer-reviewed study that found the GBR was under significant stress and that it had lost half of its hard coral since 1985. The cause of this decline was threefold: storm damage (48%), outbreaks of Crown-of-Thorns starfish (COTS) (42%) and coral bleaching (10%).

All three threats had connections with climate change but the government (in this case the Federal Government and the Queensland Government who together share responsibility for the Reef) claimed climate change is a global issue beyond its capacity to control. (And, it should be noted, since this report came out the GBR has experienced catastrophic bouts of mass coral bleaching in 2016 and 2017).

No, climate change is something the government won’t buy into but what it says it can do is improve water quality.

Dirty water

Water quality refers to the levels of chemicals, nutrients and sediments ending up in Reef waters along the coast of Queensland. These ‘contaminants’ largely originate from land-based activities such as sugar cane, bananas and pastoralism. Declining water quality has been an issue for the Reef for much of the last three decades.

Poor water quality is a problem because it alters the balance of the Reef ecosystem – promotes outbreaks of coral eating COTS, encourages algae to colonise spaces previously occupied by corals and generally lowers the Reef’s resilience* – it’s ability to recover from disturbance.

Given the government’s impotence in the face of climate change, the strategy it has elected to follow is to focus on aspects it claims it can influence. In other words, clean up water quality by changing land management. We can’t force other countries to behave differently (in respect to climate change) but we do, in theory, have power over how we manage our own landscapes.

The belief is that if water quality can be improved, this will contribute to overall reef health which, in turn, means the reef should recover faster whatever disturbance hits it (including climate related episodes of bleaching and super-charged cyclones).

Interestingly, the same day the Environment Minister released the appalling Reef Outlook report, she also released the 2017 – 2018 Reef Water Quality Report Card which gave a very gloomy prognosis: “Across all Great Barrier Reef catchments, water quality modelling showed a very poor reduction in dissolved inorganic nitrogen (0.3%) and sediment (0.5%). There was also a poor reduction in particulate nitrogen (0.5%).” What was it, bad news Friday or something; put all the garbage out at the same time (and this following on from the latest carbon emissions data showing Australia’s emissions are still rising over several years even though we say we’ll reduce them!).

So, even if we ignore climate change (exposing the moral void of our environmental stewardship), the strategy nominated by the government to protect the reef – improve water quality – is also failing to achieve anything. And this is not an isolated statement, there have been many reports in recent years showing government action is not working in improving water quality.

Why is it so hard to fix water quality? Because it’s very expensive (though a lot less expensive than taking on climate change). The government’s own costing on what is required is $8.2 billion over 10 years, and so far it hasn’t even stumped up a tenth of this.

Rating the reports

This government prides itself on its managerial approach. However, no matter how well the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is managed, it is a sitting duck facing the coming onslaught of climate-related bleaching events and big storms. The fact that the government can’t even clean up water quality just adds insult to injury.

The science has been saying what we need to do for many years (indeed, see comments by Terry Hughes, one of the world’s foremost experts comments on coral reefs, on the Outlook report) but the government hides behind the notion that because one part of the reef system is managed well (the part inside the Park) then they have met their commitments. But that well managed bit is connected to the land component next door and the greater world surrounding it, and those connections are killing the reef.

So, in light of last week’s horror reports on the Outlook for the Reef and the 2017-2018 Reef Water Quality Report Card, I think it would be fair to rate the Government’s progress as FAIL with the comment: hubristic, arrogant and duplicitous; don’t try to dress up a failure as a good effort because to do so just makes it harder to take the tough decisions that are needed.

*Reef resilience – having co-written two textbooks on resilience science (Resilience Thinking and Resilience Practice) that have played a large role in popularising the concept of resilience, it saddens by enormously to see the idea used by governments as a shield to hide behind when they are unable to engage with the science of climate change.

Image: A reef under stress on multiple fronts (Image ARC Centre of Excellence for Reef Studies)