Australia's government said Tuesday that it would oppose the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) plan to downgrade the status of the Great Barrier Reef following years of climate change-induced damage, reported Deutsche Welle (DW).
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Stretching 2,300 kilometers (1,400 miles) along Australia's northeast coast, the world's largest coral reef system, a huge draw for tourists, has been battered by global warming.
In the past five years rising ocean temperatures have caused three episodes of mass coral bleaching, when the invertebrates expel the algae living in their tissues that supply a crucial source of nutrients.
The site, which has also been lashed by cyclones and attacked by crown-of-thorns starfish, has lost half its corals since 1995.
In 2015 and 2017, Canberra narrowly avoided having UNESCO put the reef on its endangered list.
Four years on, UNESCO acknowledges the government's efforts to shore up the site but notes that Australia's own outlook for the ecosystem has been downgraded from "poor" to "very poor."
Australian Environmental Minister Sussan Ley protested the move stressing that the country had spent billions of dollars on trying to protect the reef.
"I agree that global climate change is the single biggest threat to the world's reefs but it is wrong, in our view, to single out the best-managed reef in the world for an 'in danger' listing," she said in a statement.
Other top tourist sites in danger of losing their World Heritage status include Venice, Budapest, Liverpool, and the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania.
This article was first published by i24NEWS.
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