Kelvin Thomson (Wills, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the appropriation bills, which cover a number of areas. I wish to address my remarks to one of those areas in particular, and that is the additional funding for the Department of the Environment, Water, Heritage and the Arts of $50.8 million for the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park structural adjustment package. This package relates to the major global initiative for coral reef conservation during the past two years, which was passed by the Parliament of Australia in early 2004 with the declaration of ‘highly protected’ status for 33 per cent of the whole province of the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage area, referred to as ‘no take zones’. This was an increase on the approximately five per cent of the Great Barrier Reef that had been protected since the Great Barrier Reef was first zoned for protection back in 1981.

The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority took the view that there was increasing scientific evidence that the existing multiple-use zoning was inadequate to conserve the full range of biodiversity for the entire Barrier Reef. For example, dugong populations had declined by 97 per cent since the 1960s, nesting loggerhead turtles had declined by 50 to 80 percent over four decades, commercial and recreational fishing had doubled since 1990 and populations of major target species of fish were reduced and were composed of small individual fish. Furthermore, the annual flow of sediment and nutrients into the Great Barrier Reef had increased fourfold and the reefs had suffered from severe coral bleaching, a series of cyclones and outbreaks of the crown of thorns starfish.

I well remember the debate that occurred at that time. I was shadow minister for the environment at the time. I urged the government to act on the science and, to its credit, the government did act on the science. The action taken was that no-take protection was extended to a minimum of 20 per cent of each of the 70 bioregions of the Great Barrier Reef such that the marine park now includes protection for 33⅓ per cent in the world’s largest network of highly protected areas. The government is providing assistance, which may include licence buyouts for affected parties such as commercial fishers with reduced income earning potential as a result of the new zoning—and an increase in that assistance is, of course, the substance of this bill.

The question that needs to be asked is: has the rezoning and the protection of one-third of the Great Barrier Reef from commercial and recreational fishing worked? This question has been examined by the School of Marine and Tropical Biology, by the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University at Townsville and by researchers from the Australian Institute of Marine Science. The title of their paper is ‘Rapid response to world’s largest marine reserve network’. They seek to inform the intense scientific and sociopolitical debate about the efficacy of no-fishing areas as tools for biodiversity, conservation and fisheries management. They conclude that a rapid, positive biological response over an unprecedented spatial scale—over 1,000 kilometres—has occurred in response to the recent implementation of the world’s largest network of no-take marine reserves.

The abstract of their paper says that no-take marine reserves offer a means to counter the loss of marine biodiversity, that the world’s largest network of such reserves protecting over 100,000 square kilometres of coral reef was established on the Great Barrier Reef in 2004 and that closing such a large area to all fishing was socially and politically controversial—and, indeed, it was. I well remember the former member for Dawson, the former member for Leichhardt and Queensland coalition senators attacking the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority over this issue. Given that controversy, it is imperative that the effectiveness of the new reserve network be assessed. The researchers have found that there were significant increases in density of the major target species of the reefline fisheries in marine reserves in just two years and that the increases were consistent over an unprecedented scale exceeding 1,000 kilometres.

The team from James Cook University used underwater visual census to survey reef life on coral reefs on three inshore island groups, both before and after—1½ to two years after—the implementation of the no-take marine reserves. At the same time, sites on 28 pairs of no-take and open offshore reefs were surveyed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science. All the offshore survey reefs were initially open to fishing, but one reef per pair became no-take in 2004. The findings were that, after 1½ to two years of protection, the density of the primary target of reefline fisheries, coral trout, increased significantly in the no-take areas at Palm Island and the Whitsunday Islands, by over 60 per cent. There were small and insignificant changes where reefs remained open to fishing. That is good news too because it suggests that the reserve areas are capable of replenishing stocks and of acting as nurseries for the fished areas.

Coral trout density in no-take areas increased relative to the open reefs in all three inshore regions, significantly so in the Whitsunday Islands. Over time, increased adult fish density in the no-take areas, they say, may enhance recruitment both inside and outside the no-take areas. The spatial scale of this positive response is unprecedented, occurring simultaneously over 1,000 kilometres offshore and 700 kilometres inshore. They say:

Although preliminary, our results provide an encouraging message that bold political steps to protect biodiversity can produce rapid positive results for exploited species at ecosystem scales.

This is excellent news indeed, and I want to congratulate the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority on their work in making this zoning system happen and function as well as it has. I also want to congratulate James Cook University and the Australian Institute of Marine Science for the work that they have done in examining these issues.

We should be under no illusions about the threats facing both the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs right around the world. I want to draw the attention of the House to the definitive work done by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network back in 2004, the report of which is titled The status of the coral reefs of the world: 2004. It is quite encyclopedic and it is not possible to cover it all but I do want to use the example of the Caribbean to give the parliament something of the flavour of what is occurring in coral reefs around the world. This definitive work concludes that:

Evidence is emerging of a definite, consistent and long-term decline in the status of coral reefs of the Caribbean. These are the conclusions of a group of researchers at the University of East Anglia, England, who analysed monitoring data from 263 sites from 65 separate studies spanning 3 decades ... The regional pattern of decline is alarming; with coral cover decreasing from more than 50% on average in 1977 to approximately 10% in 2001, i.e. a loss of 80% in 25 years.

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Virtually all sites showed a decline in coral cover over the study period.

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Most of the absolute loss in coral cover occurred in the 1980s, particularly in Jamaica and northern and southern Central America. These losses resulted from 3 major impacts. White-band disease swept through the region and caused massive destruction of ... corals; the mass mortality of the sea urchin ... resulted in sudden and massive overgrowth of algae, and the first major coral bleaching events also reduced coral cover.

There was also the Reefs at Risk project in the Caribbean in 2004, which assessed coastal development, watershed based sediment and pollution, marine based pollution and damage, and overfishing threats throughout the wider Caribbean. Their findings were:

• That 64% of Caribbean coral reefs are threatened by high levels of human activities, especially the Eastern and Southern Caribbean ... Florida Keys, Yucatan ...
• Coastal development threatens 33% of the region’s reefs. The threat is greatest in the Lesser and Greater Antilles, Bay Islands of Honduras, Florida Keys, Yucatan and Southern Caribbean.
• Land-based sources of pollution and sediments threaten 35% of Caribbean coral reefs, most notably Jamaica, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico ... Pollution and damage from ships threatens 15% of coral reefs, especially around large ports and cruise tourism centres.
• Over-fishing threatens more than 60% of Caribbean coral reefs, particularly on narrow coastal shelves near human population centres.
• Diseases and rising sea surface temperatures threaten reefs across the Caribbean.

The underlying theme of the 2004 report is that coral reefs are under threat around the world. There have been more recent estimates. According to a 2006 report, Coral reef conservation:

... approximately 20% of the world’s coral reefs have been destroyed and show no immediate prospect of recovery. Of those remaining, one-quarter are under imminent risk of collapse and another quarter face long-term threat of collapse.

A survey of the Caribbean has established that, since 1977, live coral across this region has decreased by between 10 and 50 per cent, exceeding the rate of decline for tropical forests. Coral cover lost in the Indian Ocean as a result of the 1998 coral bleaching event has also shown little recovery in many of the sites affected.

Researchers from the University of North Carolina, in a report released in August 2007, have found that coral coverage in the Indo-Pacific, an area stretching from Indonesia’s Sumatra island to French Polynesia, dropped 20 per cent in the past two decades. The Indo-Pacific contains 75 per cent of the world’s coral reefs and has played an important economic and cultural role in the region for hundreds of years. Their continued decline could mean the loss of millions of dollars in fisheries and tourism. The study showed that those reefs that were better managed to prevent overfishing were doing better in terms of fish population, but in terms of coral cover there was little difference between protected and unprotected reefs. The obvious conclusion from this is that warming seas as a result of climate change are likely to be driving the rapid decline in coral cover. The implications of this are that local measures aimed at conservation may mean little unless there is a global commitment to reduce greenhouse gases.

In an article in the magazine Science in May last year, Terence Hughes, who is director of the Australian Research Council’s Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Townsville, indicated that if carbon dioxide emissions are not curtailed ‘we will eventually see reefs dominated by sea anemones and algae’—in other words, the coral will be gone. The biggest danger for reefs is bleaching and, despite the merits of various conservation initiatives, unless climate change is addressed these gains from local measures and local initiatives will be erased. It is clear that the key causes of coral reef degradation originate from human activities. They include overfishing, pollution and sedimentation due to coastal development, run-off from deforested lands and the impact of global warming. With projections of future rises in sea temperatures, a concerted global effort is required to tackle this problem.

The 2004 coral reefs report to which I previously referred went to the issue of identifying threats and stresses to coral reefs in some detail. Clearly, in order to deal with the problems we need to understand what they are. The report identified: global change rates—coral bleaching, caused by elevated sea surface temperatures due to global climate change; rising levels of carbon dioxide—increased concentrations of carbon dioxide in seawater decreasing the calcification rates in coral reef organisms; and diseases, plagues and invasives—increases in diseases and plagues of coral predators that are increasingly linked to human disturbances in the environment. Then there are direct human pressures from overfishing—the harvesting of fishes and invertebrates beyond sustainable yields, including the use of damaging practices such as bomb and cyanide fishing; sediments from poor land use, deforestation and dredging; nutrients and chemical pollution; and both organic and inorganic chemicals carried with sediments in untreated sewage, waste from agriculture, animal husbandry and industry. Then there is the development of coastal areas—modification of coral reefs for urban, industrial, transport and tourism developments, including reclamation and the mining of coral reef rock and sand beyond sustainable limits.

The report pointed to the human dimension issues of governance, awareness and political will. It noted rising poverty and increasing populations. It said that increasing populations put increasing pressures on coral reef resources beyond sustainable limits. It observed poor capacity for management and lack of resources. Most coral reef countries lack trained personnel for coral reef management, raising awareness, enforcement and monitoring. There is also a lack of adequate funding and logistic resources to implement effective conservation. Then there is the lack of political will and oceans governance. Most problems facing coral reefs can be solved if there is political will and effective and non-corrupt governance of resources. But interventions by, and inertia in, global and regional organisations can impede national action to conserve coral reefs.

I think it is impossible to overemphasise the importance of the responsibility that we have, the duty that we have, to protect the Great Barrier Reef and to use our influence internationally to tackle the problems afflicting both the Great Barrier Reef and the other great reef marvels of the world. What is happening to the coral reefs around the world is nothing short of tragic. We simply cannot sit idly by and allow this to continue. I remember years ago being able to go snorkelling on a coral reef. I am not a great swimmer, but it was a fabulous experience. I thought to myself, ‘How long has this been going on for?’ They are wonderful places. The Great Barrier Reef is described as one of the natural wonders of the world, and with good reason. We have an obligation to protect the Great Barrier Reef. We have an obligation to do everything we can internationally to protect other reefs—the Caribbean and all the other great reefs of the world—which are suffering even greater declines than the Great Barrier Reef is, to do everything we can to tackle those problems and to ensure that we hand on to future generations the Great Barrier Reef and other coral reefs in the kind of condition that they were handed down to us.

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