UNESCO is aware of a new report warning Australia is unlikely to reach water quality targets for the Great Barrier Reef.
UNESCO is closely monitoring Australia's management of the reef after last year adopting a draft decision not to list it as a World Heritage site in danger.
In making that decision, it considered Australia's Reef 2050 plan to manage land-based pollution threats, such as run-off from farming activities.
But the federal government's own marine science agency warned on the weekend that current efforts to reduce run-off are unlikely to achieve water quality targets set out in the plan.
"We conclude that recent efforts in the GBR catchments to reduce land-based pollution are unlikely to be sufficient to protect the GBR ecosystems from declining water quality within the aspired timeframes," scientists from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) warned in a new paper.
The Australian government is due to update UNESCO on its reef management efforts by December.
A spokesman for federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the government made no apologies for setting ambitious targets in the reef plan.
He said the AIMS report also noted significant progress had already been made, and added the Reef 2050 plan would continue to be adapted in response to new information and emerging issues.
"Our targets for improving water quality on the reef are ambitious, but achievable. Yes, we have set hard goals, but unapologetically so," the spokesman said.
He also said the government was keeping the World Heritage body up to date on the global coral bleaching event that's affecting the reef.
Reef expert Professor Terry Hughes, the convenor of the National Coral Bleaching Taskforce, has been involved in extensive aerial surveys to document the scope of the current bleaching event.
He's described it as the worst on record, and far worse than previous widespread bleaching in 2002 and 1998.
Prof Hughes has been highly critical of the Reef 2050 plan, and is on several committees associated with it.
He says ambitious water quality targets are welcome but "are certainly not achievable" without a significant funding boost to address harmful farming practices.
Prof Hughes says the plan also ignores climate change, despite the government's own five-yearly reef outlook report listing climate change as the primary long-term threat to reef health.
"It beggars belief that a plan supposed to be in operation for the next 35 years can do that," he said.
The 2050 plan frames climate change as a global problem that requires a global solution but notes domestic efforts to deal with emissions.
It puts a heavy emphasis on building reef resilience so it can cope with climate change, and lists improving water quality, maintaining biodiversity, and ensuring port and shipping activities have minimal impact as key objectives.
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