UN: Great Barrier Reef should be on heritage ‘danger’ list
By THOMAS ADAMSON
Associated Press
PARIS (AP) — A United Nations-backed mission is recommending that the Great Barrier Reef be added to the list of endangered World Heritage sites, sounding the alarm that without “ambitious, rapid and sustained” climate action the world’s largest coral reef is in peril. The warning came in a report published Monday following a 10-day mission to the reef last March by officials from UNESCO and the International Union for Conservation of Nature. The reef, a living site of remarkable variety and beauty on the north-east coast of Australia, has been featured on the agency’s world heritage list since 1981. The report says that Australia’s federal and Queensland governments should adopt more ambitious emissions reductions targets.