Article 2. Great Barrier Reef: Australia must act urgently ...



Unit 2 AOS2: Critical evaluation of articles on water quality and the Great Barrier ReefTASK: Evaluate the two articles from the Guardian about water quality and the Great Barrier Reef to decide whether you agree or disagree with the following statement:“Improving water quality is crucial in saving the Great Barrier Reef.” Summarise your information in the A3 flow chart and use this to support your position.This task supports the ideas covered in Unit 2 AOS2 and key science skill: critically evaluate various types of information related to chemistry from journal articles, mass media and opinions presented in the public domainArticle 1. Great Barrier Reef: plan to improve water quality ignores scientific adviceMichael Slezak; Thur 31 Aug 2017? Reference: Slezak, M (2017) Great Barrier Reef: plan to improve water quality ignores scientific advice. The Guardian, [date accessed 2nd Feb 2018].Scientific advice concludes the Great Barrier Reef is in poor and deteriorating quality and lays the blame for much of the situation on water quality. Australia’s draft plan to improve water quality on the Great Barrier Reef has ignored official government scientific advice, which was published by the Queensland and federal governments alongside the new plan this week. The draft Reef 2050 Water Quality Improvement Plan is an update to the plan released in 2013, and provides new water quality targets for specific parts of the reef but has very few other concrete changes overall. That is despite the plan itself acknowledging that “current initiatives will not meet water quality targets”, noting the “urgently needed” acceleration of efforts and explicitly stating that “a step change is needed”. The plan repeatedly says it is “based on the best available independent scientific advice, as provided by scientific consensus statement 2017”. But that statement, published alongside the plan, is highly critical of the approach taken in the plan.“Current initiatives will not meet the water quality targets,” the consensus statement says, calling for increased support and resources, as well as regulation to reduce agricultural runoff – a recommendation also made by a Queensland government taskforce. In line with every other piece of scientific advice, the consensus statement concludes the reef is in poor and deteriorating quality, and lays the blame for much of the situation on water quality.Scientists say that in the face of climate change and increased frequency and severity of bleaching on the Great Barrier Reef, improved water quality is urgently needed to relieve some of the pressures and to make the reef more “resilient”. The plan points to $2bn being spent over 10 years by the Queensland and federal governments to protect the reef. But roughly half of that is being spent on water quality. That is about one-tenth of what a Queensland government taskforce concluded was needed, a figure they said would still not allow the targets to be met. One member of the Reef Water Quality Independent Science Panel that wrote the consensus statement, Jon Brodie from James Cook University, said the governments were not listening to their own expert advice. “In the end, the plan is not taking up the recommendations of the consensus statement at all,” Brodie said.Asked whether the money being spent on initiatives not in line with expert advice meant the governments were wasting $1bn, Brodie said: “That was asked recently by people from the government … I think spending it as we are now … is a bit silly.” Brodie said it was too late to spread the money across the entire reef and it was time to focus in on bits of the reef that might be able to be saved. “The issue we have now is the coral is in terminal condition and the best we can hope for is to protect some parts of the coral on the Great Barrier Reef,” Brodie said.“We’re still spending a lot of money but we’re not achieving enough to provide resilience to the whole Great Barrier Reef, perhaps we could better spend it on providing resilience for just some of the coral.” The world heritage committee flagged its concern over reef water quality at its annual meeting in July, saying “the plan will need to accelerate to ensure that the intermediate and long-term targets of 2050 LTSP are being met, in particular regarding water quality”. Sean Hoobin from WWF-Australia said the governments were ignoring those concerns.“There is no meaningful detail on the actions and investment needed to deliver promised cuts to reef pollution,” he said. The minister for the environment and energy, Josh Frydenberg said in a statement: “By focusing our efforts on improving water quality, we are giving the reef the best chance to adapt and recover from the impacts of coral bleaching.“This new plan has an expanded scope and addresses all land-based sources of water pollution including run-off from urban, industrial and public lands, as well as from agricultural activities.” The Queensland minister for the environment, Steven Miles, said the plan recognised the importance of people in creating change and included social, cultural and economic values for the first time. “The new plan sets water quality targets for each of the 35 catchments flowing to the reef using scientific modelling and other technical information to work out the pollution reduction targets based on what the Reef needs to be healthy,” Miles said.Article 2. Great Barrier Reef: Australia must act urgently on water quality, says UnescoReference: Wahlquist, C (2017) Great Barrier Reef: Australia must act urgently on water quality, says Unesco, The Guardian, [date accessed 2nd Feb 2018].Unesco has expressed “serious concern” about the impact of coral bleaching on the?Great Barrier Reef?and warned Australia it will not meet the targets of the Reef 2050 report without considerable work to improve water quality.The criticism was contained in?a draft decision published as part of the agenda for the upcoming world heritage committee meeting?(pdf), which will take place in Krakow, Poland, in the first two weeks of July.It suggested the Great Barrier Reef should remain off the danger list, despite?back-to-back coral bleaching events affecting about two-thirds?of the reef and the?latest data showing a sharp decline in coral cover in the north.The draft decision also praised the Australian and?Queensland?governments for initial work done to implement the Reef 2050 plan that included establishing a $1.28bn investment strategy, most of which will be spent on improving water quality. However, the report said progress on reducing the number of agricultural pollutants flowing into the reef “had been slow” and Australia would not, at this rate, meet either its interim or long-term targets to improve water quality. It “strongly encouraged” Australia to “accelerate efforts to ensure meeting the immediate and long-term targets of the plan, which are essential to the overall resilience of the property, in particularly regarding water quality”. It also said climate change remained “the most significant overall threat” to the future of the reef, and “recommended that the committee express its serious concern at the coral bleaching and mortality that occurred in 2016 and at the second event underway in early 2017. “While the long-term effects of these events cannot be fully evaluated yet, their scale serves to underline the severity of the threat to the property from climate change,” Unesco said. “At the site level, there is a need to consider how these mass bleaching events influence the effectiveness of the [Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan] in its current form, notably in relation to the most urgently needed measures and improvements that contribute to the property’s resilience.” Meeting those water quality targets would require a ten-fold increase in investment to $10bn over the next 10 years, the leading expert on water quality for the reef, Jon Brodie, said.It would also involve transitioning farmland in the Great Barrier Reef catchment from sugar cane plantations, which use fertilisers that cause much of the water pollution in the reef, to a less high-intensity form of agriculture, such as grazing. “There’s things that could be done for the water quality part but it’s hard to see this government doing them,” Brodie told Guardian Australia. “The federal government is unfortunately just writing the Great Barrier Reef off. Other things are more important to them, like the support of farmers in Queensland, and the coal industry.”Brodie said improving water quality would “not be enough by itself” to save the reef, which faces its most direct threat from climate change. But unlike climate change, Brodie said, the quality of water flowing into the reef is directly under the control of existing Australian legislation. Improving water quality cannot prevent future bleaching events, but it can improve the capacity of the reef to recover.The environment minister,?Josh Frydenberg, welcomed the Unesco draft decision on Saturday, which he said “confirms the Reef 2050 plan has been effective”. “The draft decision points to the importance of the reef’s resilience despite the challenges faced from coral bleaching,” he said.Frydenberg acknowledged the committee’s push for accelerated action on water quality and said international efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions was “critical for reefs worldwide, including the Great Barrier Reef”. He cited Australia’s continued commitment to the Paris agreement, which the?US president, Donald Trump, abandoned on Friday, as evidence of Australia’s efforts.Unesco?is expected to release a second report on the impact of climate change on the health of all world heritage listed reefs before the July meeting. Richard Leck, oceans campaigner for the World?Wildlife?Fund, said that while the impacts of water quality and land clearing on the health of the reef were significant, climate change remained the major threat.If the global climate warmed by 1.5 degrees, Leck said, the Great Barrier Reef would not survive. “We need to have climate policies that will actually protect the reef and currently our climate policies are nowhere near sufficient to get the action required to save the reef,” he said. The Australian Marine Conservation Society seconded that concern, and called on the Queensland government to immediately introduce land clearing laws, scrapped under the Newman government, to reduce the amount of runoff flowing into the reef’s catchment. The Palaszczuk government?tried to reintroduce land-clearing laws in 2016?but failed to get them past parliament. right16510Print to A3 “Improving water quality is crucial in saving the Great Barrier Reef.” Do you agree or disagree?Position______________________Name:________________Supporting augments (write dot points to support your position of whether you agree or disagree with the above statement.)00Print to A3 “Improving water quality is crucial in saving the Great Barrier Reef.” Do you agree or disagree?Position______________________Name:________________Supporting augments (write dot points to support your position of whether you agree or disagree with the above statement.)right1519132Article 2. Step 1. Evaluate validity of articleIs the article a primary/secondary/tertiary source?Is the article scientific or non-scientific?Is the article written by a government agency (.gov), blog (.com), commercial company (.com), media article (personal opinion)Use the information from the table to support your explanation of whether the article is valid.Step 2. List the ideas from the article that are relevant to the above statement. Highlight the ideas that support your position.00Article 2. Step 1. Evaluate validity of articleIs the article a primary/secondary/tertiary source?Is the article scientific or non-scientific?Is the article written by a government agency (.gov), blog (.com), commercial company (.com), media article (personal opinion)Use the information from the table to support your explanation of whether the article is valid.Step 2. List the ideas from the article that are relevant to the above statement. Highlight the ideas that support your position.left1672731Article 1. Step 1. Evaluate validity of articleIs the article a primary/secondary/tertiary source?Is the article scientific or non-scientific?Is the article written by a government agency (.gov), blog (.com), commercial company (.com), media article (personal opinion)Use the information from the table to support your explanation of whether the article is valid.Step 2. List the ideas from the article that are relevant to the above statement. Highlight the ideas that support your position.00Article 1. Step 1. Evaluate validity of articleIs the article a primary/secondary/tertiary source?Is the article scientific or non-scientific?Is the article written by a government agency (.gov), blog (.com), commercial company (.com), media article (personal opinion)Use the information from the table to support your explanation of whether the article is valid.Step 2. List the ideas from the article that are relevant to the above statement. Highlight the ideas that support your position. ................
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