A new report has put a dollar value on the impact of climate change on the Great Barrier Reef. The study, by the international consultancy Oxford Economics, predicts that coral bleaching will cost the Australian economy more than 30 billion US dollars. The study took into account not just lost tourism, commercial fishing and other commercial activities, but also the reef’s indirect benefits such as its role in protecting coastal communities from severe weather episodes. Presenter: Dina Rosendorff
Speaker: Judy Stewart, of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation; Don Henry, the Australian Conservation Foundation’s executive director; Daniel Gschwind, Queensland Tourism Industry Council * Listen: Windows Media DINA ROSENDORFF: Coral bleaching is widely considered to be one of the most urgent threats facing the Great Barrier Reef. It’s suffered bleaching six times over the past 25 years. Now the British forecaster Oxford Economics has for the first time quantified the cost of coral bleaching to the reef. JUDY STEWART: In order to do that they had to come up with a value of the reef and while valuations of the reef have been done in the past they used a new methodology which came up with a value at $51.4 billion for the whole of reef. … DINA ROSENDORFF: In particular the study focused on the tourism hub of Cairns where the reef’s value to the region is assessed at $17.9 billion. It found that in the worst case scenario in which all of the coral is bleached permanently the loss to Cairns would be devastating. The value of the reef would tumble by 90 per cent or $16.3 billion. And Judy Stewart says half of all tourists would stay away. …
Coral bleaching to cost Australia billions
