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takyon writes:

Two years after a 35-year plan to save Australia's Great Barrier Reef was released, the country is being told that it is failing to meet the targets:

The United Nations cultural heritage body UNESCO urged Australia on Saturday to accelerate efforts to save the Great Barrier Reef, saying long term targets to improve its health were unlikely to be met.

Progress towards achieving water quality targets has been slow, and Australia was at risk of falling short of its 2050 goals, UNESCO warned in a draft assessment of world heritage sites prepared ahead of a meeting in Krakow, Poland, in July.

"The World Heritage Centre and IUCN consider that the implementation of the Plan will need to accelerate to ensure that the intermediate and long-term targets of 2050 LTSP (Long-Term Sustainability Plan) are being met, in particular regarding water quality," the report said.

Australia's Reef 2050 Plan was released in 2015 and is a key part of the government's bid to prevent the World Heritage Site being placed on the United Nation's "in danger" list.

Also at The Guardian.

Meanwhile, experts have called for a new approach to coral reef conservation in the "Anthropocene":

In a paper [DOI: 10.1038/nature22901] [DX] out Wednesday in the journal Nature, more than a dozen experts from around the world say that coral reefs are likely to undergo major changes as a result of continued climate change and other human activities, like fishing. But while future coral ecosystems might look a lot different than they do today, from the species they contain to the places they live, they aren't necessarily doomed. In fact, accepting this transition and helping them through it might be the best — and even only way — to save them.

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