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The Australian Climate Crisis and the Great Barrier Reef

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The Australian Climate Crisis and the Great Barrier Reef JUNE 2020 THE AUSTRALIAN CLIMATE CRISIS How Australia is Fueling the Destruction of the Great Barrier Reef and Other Climate-Vulnerable Australian World Heritage Properties ABOUT EARTHJUSTICE Founded in 1971, Earthjustice fights for the right of all to a healthy environment. As the largest nonprofit environmental law organization in the United States, Earthjustice uses the power of the law and the strength of partnership to protect people’s health, preserve magnificent places and wildlife, advance clean energy, and combat climate change. We partner with thousands of groups and individuals to take on the critical environmental issues of our time and bring about positive change. 50 California, Suite 500 earthjustice.org San Francisco, CA USA 94111 ABOUT ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE AUSTRALIA Environmental Justice Australia is the environment’s legal team. We use the law to protect our environment, and we work to change our laws to make sure they protect the right of all Australians to clean air, clean water and healthy ecosystems. 60 Leicester Street envirojustice.org.au Carlton, VIC, Australia 3053 Turtle and bleached coral, Heron Island, Great Barrier Reef. XL Catlin Seaview Survey / Richard Vevers SUMMARY Across Australia, the intensifying impacts of climate change are causing the deterioration of World Heritage properties and their Outstanding Universal Value (“OUV”).* Australia’s actions are fueling this decline. Australia’s most iconic World Heritage property – the Great Barrier Reef – is under such serious threat from the impacts of climate change, and essential components of its ecosystem are in such poor health, that it meets the criteria for inscription on the List of the World Heritage in Danger. In 2019, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (“GBRMPA”) concluded that the outlook for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area’s ecosystem is “very poor.” GBRMPA also found that the overall integrity of the Reef is worse than in 2014, and the four “natural heritage values” of the Reef (which correspond to the criteria for assessment of OUV for which the Reef was inscribed on the World Heritage List1) have deteriorated since 2014. GBRMPA also determined that key species and habitats that contribute to the Reef’s OUV are in “very poor” or “poor” condition, including corals, coral reef habitats, marine turtles, and dugongs. The most serious threat to the Reef’s OUV is the impacts of climate change – particularly sea temperature rise. For example, in 2016 and 2017 around half of the Reef’s shallow-water corals died in unprecedented consecutive bleaching events caused by elevated sea temperatures attributed to climate change. Coral reef scientists are predicting another bleaching event in coming months, with sea surface temperatures in February 2020 the hottest ever recorded on the Reef and new bleaching already being observed in many areas of the Reef. As temperatures continue to increase, harm to the Reef will intensify. To protect the Reef’s OUV, warming must be limited to well below 1.5°C above preindustrial levels. Even 1.5°C of warming will result in further significant deterioration of the Reef, and at the current rate of warming – which puts the planet on track for over 3°C of warming by 2100 – the Reef as we know it today will cease to exist. For these reasons, accelerated and significant action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and place the world on a pathway that keeps warming well below 1.5°C is essential to protecting the OUV of the Great Barrier Reef. The impacts of climate change are also threatening the OUV of other Australian World Heritage properties. In late 2019 and early 2020, wildfires burned an astonishing 80% of the Greater Blue Mountains World Heritage Area and 54% of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area, parts of which have historically been too wet to burn.2 Climate scientists have concluded that the hot and dry conditions that fueled the firestorms were exacerbated by climate change, and that extreme fire weather in Australia will continue to become more frequent and severe as the The World Heritage-listed Blue Mountains National Park. climate continues to change.3 Getty Images / Andrew Merry * “Outstanding Universal Value means cultural and/or natural significance which is so exceptional as to transcend national boundaries and to be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. As such, the permanent protection of this heritage is of the highest importance to the international community as a whole.” Operational Guidelines for the Implementation of the World Heritage Convention (Jul. 2019), para. 49. 1 Although no single country can solve the climate crisis, this does not absolve state parties of their obligations under the World Heritage Convention to address the threat of climate change to the OUV of properties within their territory. The Convention requires state parties to “do all [they] can … to the utmost of [their] own resources” to protect and conserve World Heritage properties, and to ensure that the OUV of properties in their territories is “sustained or enhanced over time.” To protect the Great Barrier Reef and sustain and enhance its OUV, warming must be limited to well below 1.5°C. Accordingly, these obligations require Australia to do all it can to the utmost of its resources to proactively align its actions – including its domestic emissions and exports of fossil fuels that emit greenhouse gases – with limiting warming to well below 1.5°C, and to achieve its fair share of global emissions reductions. These obligations under the World Heritage Convention exist independently of commitments made by nations under the Paris Agreement, and nothing in the Paris Agreement prevents governments from taking action beyond what they have committed and pledged under that agreement. As described in the letter attached as Appendix 1 to this submission, other United Nations treaty bodies whose mandates are affected by climate change have reached similar conclusions and are recommending climate-related actions by individual states that are independent of those states’ Paris commitments where such actions are necessary to fulfil state obligations under other treaties. Despite being a well-resourced country with high capacity to align its actions with a well-below-1.5°C pathway, Australia is not doing all it can to the utmost of its resources to protect the Great Barrier Reef and to sustain and enhance its OUV, and its 2019 report under the Convention misrepresents the adequacy of its action to address climate change. The following facts demonstrate that Australia is violating its obligations under the World Heritage Convention and fueling the deterioration of the Reef’s OUV – and the OUV of its other climate-vulnerable World Heritage properties – by failing to align its actions with a well-below-1.5°C pathway or undertake its fair share of global emissions reductions: • Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions, excluding land use, land-use change and forestry emissions, rose every year from 2014 to 2018, with no significant decline projected to 2030, and Australia is not on track to meet its 2020 or 2030 emissions reductions targets under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change; • Australia’s proposed reliance on carryover credits to meet its 2020 and 2030 emissions reductions targets undermines global action on climate change because it substantially cuts Australia’s total reductions and is contrary to the Paris Agreement’s goal of increasingly ambitious reductions; • Australia’s 2030 target does not represent its fair share of global emissions reductions; • Australia is the one of the world’s two largest exporters of coal and the world’s largest exporter of liquefied natural gas, and plans to continue expanding these exports; • Under current policies, Australia’s per-capita emissions will remain among the highest globally to at least 2030, and Australia’s state party report misrepresents the adequacy of its action to address this; and • Australia’s economy remains carbon-intensive and the government actively promotes the use of fossil fuels. Furthermore, Australia’s Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan – the government’s framework for managing the Reef until 2050 – fails to address the threat of climate change beyond a reliance on inadequate government climate policy, and is silent on the impact of emissions from Australian fossil fuel exports. 2 In these circumstances, to ensure that Australia fulfils its obligations under the World Heritage Convention to protect the Great Barrier Reef and sustain and enhance its OUV, we request that the World Heritage Committee, at its 44th session in 2020: 1. Express its deep concern about the very poor and deteriorating outlook for the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area and the immediate and long-term threat that climate change poses to the health and survival of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem; 2. Note that scientific evidence demonstrates that the average global temperature increase must be limited to well below 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels to protect the Outstanding Universal Value of the Great Barrier Reef; 3. Call on Australia to align its actions with a well-below-1.5°C pathway, including by taking steps to decarbonize the economy, promote renewable energy sources, and phase out domestic reliance on fossil fuels and production and export of fossil fuels; 4. Call on Australia to undertake the most ambitious implementation of the Paris Agreement to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels by intensifying its efforts to meet its 2030 emissions reduction target, and to strengthen its 2030 emissions reduction target so that it represents Australia’s fair share of global emissions reductions to align with a well-below-1.5°C pathway; 5. Require Australia to revise the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan to include: a.
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