Photo Wise Hok Wai Lum
By Jo Nova
Who Needs World Heritage Listing Anyway?
The best managed and largest reef system in the world just avoided being listed as “in danger” yet again. Despite the reef having near record levels of coral cover for the last four years, UNESCO tut-tutted and gave Australia a conditional pass, telling us we must do a water report in 18 months and conservation report in December 2028. Dance monkey, dance.
Not only that, but the unaudited and unelected foreign committee tells the Australian government that we need to stop the destruction of Queensland’s forest and bushland too, because that’s making the whole planet warmer. So no more industrial wind parks in the wilderness then? Alas — The UN doesn’t care about that destruction, but they do say — like a true Nanny, that they will continue to “watch with a magnifying glass.” Which means exactly nothing. Other coral reefs in the world are being “blast fished” with home made bombs, but their governments didn’t make the mistake of begging for listing as a World Heritage Site, so they can blast away. The magnifying glass doesn’t see the exploding fish.
The Patsy Labor Government should have told the UN to get a grip — instead it said “Thank you”.
The Blob always wins
The UN threatens us with the dreaded sticker of reef sin nearly every year. They do a song and dance performance and so do we, and then we are granted mercy “with conditions” that usually involve spending millions of dollars on bureaucrats or “friends of the Blob”.
Great Barrier Reef avoids ‘in danger’ listing in World Heritage Committee draft decision
ABC News
The Great Barrier Reef has avoided an “in danger” listing in a draft decision by the World Heritage Committee.
In the document released overnight, the UNESCO Committee noted Australia’s “ongoing commitment and enhanced collaborative efforts” towards the reef’s long-term protection.
However, the UN body also raised “utmost concern” over the site’s declining coral cover after mass bleaching events in 2024 and 2025.
Their concerns are always ‘utmost’ — see Decision 47, Decision 45, Decision 46, all done while the Great Barrier Reef was at the highest levels of coral cover seen since 1986.
The UN looks acts and smells like it is a proto world government, telling us what to do with our forests, farms and coral. It costs the UN almost nothing to launch preposterous PR Bombs and extract whatever they want. And we pay the UN to do it.
Pander, pander, pander
Australia welcomes draft UNESCO decision to keep Great Barrier Reef off danger list
Australia doesn’t need the UN Heritage Listing to prove the Great Barrier Reef is a spectacular tourism asset. We just need photos.
As I said two years ago: The Labor party sold out the nation. The only correct response was to ask UNESCO why it was wasting our taxpayer funds and launch an audit of our UN contributions. Do we get value for money, or is the UN using our funds, and their own corrupt heritage list, to extort policies that the Australian voters didn’t vote for?
It’s not about the science
REFERENCE
Peter Ridd, Reef Rebels Coral Cover Graph of AIMS data.
Looooooooooooooong past time Australia exited the UN.
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If I want the best ongoing update on the health of the GBR I watch the latest Dr Peter Ridd videos and ignore the UN BS and nonsense.
This costs us nothing and makes me feel confident that we are keeping up with the latest data.
When will we wake up and save the taxpayer billions of dollars and spend that money on baseload power stations or on our roads etc?
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Another “conditional pass” following the usual threats that are so obviously based on the economics of tourism and GBR Queensland to ensure UN compliance, in other words blackmail.
Albanese Labor Government has cooperated, the latest being them signing the EU Free Trade Agreement complete with terms and conditions including commitment to UN net zero emissions agenda politics and UN Agenda 21 influence by EU Government on land use in Australia.
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Totally agree.
The funny thing is, if the reef did get listed as in danger, we know nothing much would change except the poor tax payer would have to fork out for more reports and UN interference.
BUT tourism would most likely increase! People have the deep need to see something before it is “gone”.
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A lot of this UNESCO attention is due to the various groups of scientists who gain a rent from ‘caring for’ the Reef. It’s a bit like an extortion event where the scientific grifters say ‘give us more money or the Reef gets it’ (‘it’ being a UNESCO downgrade). It’s been going on for years, long past time we should get rid of all these public service science institutions whose only interest is in ensuring they get paid, and they that they will use any unscientific nonsense theory (see Climate Change) to leverage their position.
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Claiming the reef or anything or anyone else is a victim of “climate change” and needs lots of taxpayer money for “research” is an easy way for lazy grifting “scientists” to get funding, rather than undertaking genuine scholarship in some other area.
It’s a winner for everyone. The “scientists” get “their” taxpayer money, the politicians say they are doing something about the “problem”, the media and Left get something to faux panic about, the Reef gets shut down to tourism thus satisfying Australia’s urge for self-destruction and economic damage etc..
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And notice that all the places at supposed risk to “climate change” also happen to be excellent taxpayer-funded adventure holiday locations for the grifters who do “research” there, e.g. Great Barrier Reef, Pacific Islands, Arctic, Antarctic etc..
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This is good news. The slightly better news is that the UN has bigger things to worry about. At the top of the list is FUNDING. Staff numbers were cut by 5,364 through 2025. That is only 3.4% but it is a start.
Another 2,900 will be cut off from their easy money supply in 2026.
Rome was not built in a day and it will take a few more years before enough countries condemn the UN agenda for it to disappear.
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More appropriately, it didn’t fall in a day either, or even a few weeks, it was along decay of corruption, mismanagement and distain by the elites for it’s subjects that bought about it downfall.
The same as we are seeing in the much shorter reign of the UN and their corrupt sycophants in our governments. The sooner their ivory towers collapse the better.
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The Western Roman Empire collapsed due to much of the same reasons the modern West is collapsing, less so in the United States under TRUMP:
-Moral and cultural decay / loss of civic virtue.
-Decline in traditional religion and values.
-Uncontrolled immigration and barbarian integration.
-Economic mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility.
-Political instability, corruption and weak leadership.
-Military decay and loss of martial spirit.
-Loss of various territories.
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Good news, but the fanatically woke globalist regimes like Australia will do their best to make up the slack from reduced US funding, despite the fact that this money is desperately needed at home, but the Government doesn’t care.
The fact that UN staff, like any public serpents, are worried about the prospect of reduced funding shows you they know they are unemployable in just about any proper job.
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I have family visiting Port Douglas atm, I’m interested if they will have any feedback from local tourism operators on the state of the reef, see if it runs contrary to the UN’s assessment.
There’s a low number of comments for this time of morning, l expect the Telstra network outage may have caused this.
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Acronyms should not be spoken as though they are words but …
Never have there been more onomatopoeiac acronyms than UN and EU.
Un being the prefix of negativity and yeuw being an expression of revulsion.
And although not a plant, coral behaves like an invasive weed species which will take care of itself. Nuking it at Bikini Atoll just seemed to encourage it.
Hey. That’s it. Just blow it up. Start with a small test area and see what happens. You know it makes sense.
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This will be giving China ideas for nuclear testing.
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” Never have there been more onomatopoeiac acronyms than UN and EU. ”
WEF will take a bit of beating.
And then there’s BOM….
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Forrest Gardener,
Not so. An acronym is pronounced as a word (e.g. Nato, UNESCO)
When the abbreviation is pronounced letter by letter (EU, UN, WHO, etc.), it is an initialism.
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Ah, the rules of English being defined by common usage.
So if lots of people start saying en ay te oh then the rules will change and it will cease to be an acronym.
I like it!
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The UN has been a long-term disaster. Our Great Barrier Reef is in danger from UNESCO and their poxy World Heritage Committee.
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Bomb fishing? Bikini atoll was the site of 23, yes twenty three, atomic bomb detonations between 1946 and 1958. According to Gulag ai, ‘… Scientists have observed massive, healthy corals, thriving fish populations and normal marine life in and around the massive bomb craters.’ This despite the islands themselves still recording dangerous levels of radioactivity. A little bleaching now and then pales into insignificance.
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Snap. Great minds think alike.
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The background radiation levels are safe and you can swim and dive in the lagoon.
The problem is the cesium-137 in the top 15inches/38cm of soil that gets into plants and animals so you shouldn’t eat them.
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DM,
Caesium 137 has a half life of 30 years, so it will be down to really safe levels in 180 years. That is, if it is not already safe, but deemed to be unsafe by cherry picking of harm/dose relationships by bureaucrats.
Geoff S
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Well Yaah! (I thought it was funny caus I’m a clown)
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The reef is supposedly at such risk yet natives are allowed to commercially or otherwise exploit dugong and turtle, killing in an extremely cruel manner.
Even Their ABC admits to it.
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And that’s not racist at all.
Nope. Nuh uh. No way.
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If the natives are going to hunt dugong and turtle they should have to do it using traditional native techniques, not using things bought to them by white civilization.
Bark canoes and fire hardened spears should be it.
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And no government hand outs.
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And these “traditional hunting methods” are mostly carried out with 20 foot tinnies and 200hp outboards.
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Wokeism takes precedence over animal cruelty these days. The RSPCA of all organisations condones indigenous use of modern vehicles to hunt dugongs. Note the word “humanely” in the web link.
https://kb.rspca.org.au/categories/wild-animals/hunting/subsistence-hunting/can-turtles-and-dugongs-be-killed-humanely-using-traditional-hunting-methods
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DM,
When I used to visit NQ places like Lockhart River around 1990, there was much excitement when another dugong slaughter was about to start.
Get one beside a small boat, shoot it in the head with a big bore rifle.
Geoff S
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Obviously the GBR is thriving today and yet so is the flourishing of our world and many animal species. The co2 Coalition’s Vijay Jayaraj has checked out many of the wonderful ways Humans and other animals and plants have thrived over many years and the extra co2 is now greening the world.
But try and talk to clueless left wing donkeys and some get very hostile when you point out the ways things have vastly improved since the start of the Industrial Revolution.
There are many imbedded links to the facts that prove Vijay’s optimism.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2026/07/07/an-imperfect-world-that-is-better-than-ever/
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‘ … left wing donkeys …’
Best leave that out, I know a lot of right wing donkeys who believe the scientists.
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Well EG I think many scientists are correct and they also provide historical data and yes some of them are rational and on the left side of politics.
But there are more of them on the left that believe in their stupid religious cult and I have very little time for their lazy POV.
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The next super El Nino should cause massive bleaching and the GBR will be endangered once again. No point in telling them its only natural.
‘Past reports have estimated that over 15% of the world’s coral reefs were effectively lost during 1997-1999.
‘This was associated with what has been argued to be the largest El Niño on record (1997-1998), followed immediately by a strong La Niña (1998-1999). In general, many areas that are untouched by warming during an El Niño are influenced by warming during a La Niña.’ (NOAA)
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Wouldn’t be surprised if there are a hundred govt employees and consultants evaluating the unesco reports and our policy response.
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Dr Judith Curry would disagree on GBR health and coral cover. She has been going hard at Peter Ridd lately on her substack and on facebook.
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