UNESCO Panel Recommends Listing Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as 'In Danger'

A special committee with the United Nations’s cultural agency says Australia’s Great Barrier Reef should be placed on a list of World Heritage sites that should be designated as “in danger.” 

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization’s World Heritage Committee, or UNESCO, recommended the 2,300-kilometer-long coral reef system should be placed on the list because it has deteriorated due to climate change.   Australian officials denounced the recommendation. Environment Minister Sussan Ley said Tuesday that Canberra opposes the designation and accused the World Heritage Committee of “a backflip on previous assurances” and that it would not take such an action before its formal meeting next month.   Ley said she and Foreign Minister Marise Payne had spoken by phone to UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay about the decision, which she called “flawed” and a decision influenced by politics.