Science is done and translates into rational decisions – right? Wrong! How lobbying works for real.

The Great Barrier Reef is not on the ‘in danger’ list. Why, and what happens next?

There are tens of billions of corals on the Great Barrier Reef that knit together to form a giant mass that is most certainly, definitely, no doubt about it, in danger.

Nobody at the world heritage committee late on Friday night thought otherwise.

And yet, the 21-country committee was not willing to put the reef on its “in danger” list after a fierce global lobbying effort by Australia.

So what on earth is going on here? And what does this most blinding of contradictions mean for Australia as the custodian of the world’s biggest coral reef system?

The effects of fossil-fuel driven global heating did not suddenly disappear. The record heat that drove corals across the reef’s 2,300 kilometres to bleach white in 2016, 2017 and 2020 still happened.  Click here to read more