Action on climate change needed to save World Heritage sites

Martin Wagner and Noni Austin outline how the continued exploitation of ‘dirty energy’ resources is not only affecting our climate but is now also having an adverse effect on treasured World Heritage sites

Climate change has claimed another victim. Almost one-quarter of the coral in Australia’s Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area — one of the world’s richest and most complex ecosystems — has died this year, in the worst mass coral bleaching in recorded history. Even in the far northern reaches of the Reef, long at a sufficient distance from human pressures like coastal development to preserve, to a large extent, coral health, a staggering 50% of the coral has died.

The above-average sea temperatures that triggered this bleaching were made 175 times more likely by climate change. As the ocean continues to absorb heat from the atmosphere, large-scale coral bleaching like that which has decimated the Great Barrier Reef —not to mention other destructive phenomena spurred by rising temperatures — is likely to become even more frequent and devastating.