Huge cost of UNESCO’s protracted campaign against Great Barrier Reef

Cost of Great Barrier Reef Catastrophism

By Professor Peter Ridd, retired reef physicist JCU

Summary

For six decades there have been predictions of the imminent demise of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR). However, in the last five years, surveys have measured more coral on the GBR than ever previously recorded. This remarkable statistic has occurred despite claims that huge amounts of coral have been killed in five hot water bleaching events since 2016. It is proof that the GBR is in excellent state, but that the science institutions are unreliable.

The question therefore remains – what has been the economic cost of the unjustified catastrophism about the GBR?

This report presents calculations of the costs of GBR catastrophism which can be relatively easily calculated (see table 1). The biggest cost (ca. $800 million) is the impact on the tourist industry due to continuous bad publicity about the GBR. In addition, there are also significant losses in mining and fisheries. Government funding for science, management and pointless ‘save the reef’ projects cost over $400 million per year.

Industry	Problem	Cost ($ million)
Tourism	Damage to reputation	800
Mining	Projects failing permission	200
Science	Inefficient allocation of science resources	85
Management	Unnecessary over-management	50
Fisheries	Fishing closures and restrictions	40
Government allocations	Pointless ‘Save the Reef’ projects	300
TOTAL		ca. $1.5 billion/ year1

Table 1: Annual cost of unwarranted catastrophism to the Queensland economy

In addition to these tangible economic costs, there are many other less tangible costs associated with GBR catastrophism. These include direct costs of red tape on agriculture, and lost opportunities in agriculture due to excessive red-tape. The exclusion of these less tangible costs means that this report underestimates the true cost of GBR catastrophism – possibly by a very large margin.

There are also non-economic, cultural and psychological, costs especially among young people who mistakenly believe that the GBR is doomed and our society and way of life is to blame. In some regards, this last effect is the most serious of all.

1. Note: this number was rounded to 2 significant figures

Figure 1 The average coral cover on the Great Barrier Reef as measured by the Australian Institute of Marine Science.³ This data is calculated each year from surveys of about 100 reefs. “Devastating” bleaching occurred in 2016/17/20/22/24.

This report attempts to quantify the costs associated with GBR-catastrophism. These include expenditure on science institutions, government funding to reduce sediment runoff, mining developments which were cancelled, fishing industry closures, and the impact of negative publicity on tourism. Unfortunately, many other costs are extremely difficult to quantify and are not included in this report. These include direct costs of red-tape and regulations, and opportunity costs of economic activity that did not proceed due to regulations.

Perhaps the greatest costs of GBR catastrophism are intangible – psychological and cultural damage because large fractions of the population believe an iconic part of Australia has been destroyed by the Australian way-of-life. Many young people are suffering from the delusion that the world is on the edge of an environmental precipice, and this is affecting their mental state. The condition of the GBR is often cited as being evidence for this imminent environmental collapse and is taught in school curricula in Australia, and around the world. The state of the GBR is also tied to the wider debate about climate change, and calls for western countries to totally change their energy production systems. The costs of this energy transition into a new dark age will cost trillions of dollars per year. But what fraction does bogus information on the GBR contribute to this suicidal energy ‘transition’. Like the psychological impacts on children, this is beyond the scope of this report, which will be limited to impacts that can be calculated – albeit on occasions with significant uncertainty.

Comment on uncertainty: Many of the costs calculated in this report are inevitably difficult to calculate and have large uncertainty. For this reason, order of magnitude and single-significant-figure accuracy estimations are made. The intent is to determine if the costs are in the order of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions or billions per year.

2 Lost Tourism – $800 million/year

Although predictions of the imminent demise of the GBR have occurred regularly since the early 1960s, the last decade has seen an unprecedented amount of news reporting catastrophic damage to the reef due to hot water bleaching events. Five “catastrophic” events have been reported (in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022 and 2024) and, each time, news has been carried on all the major news networks internationally. Most people in the western world would have seen dozens of news reports claiming that massive damage has been done to the GBR. For example, in April 2016 the Washington Post headlines read “And then we wept: Scientists say 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef now bleached”⁴. In October 2020, Germany’s Deutche Welle reported the GBR had lost half its coral in the last 20 years⁵. In 2024 The Times of India reported “For the first time, extreme bleaching — which is when more than 90% of coral cover has bleached — has occurred everywhere on the Great Barrier Reef.”⁶

The question is to what extent has this monthly stream of bad news about the GBR affected tourist numbers.

An attempt to answer this question was made in a study by the Australia Institute in 2016.⁷ They polled over 1000 people in each of the UK USA and China, and 1398 people in Australia, about whether they would be less likely to visit the GBR if bleaching persisted. The report concluded “… Great Barrier Reef tourism areas are at risk of losing over 1 million visitors per year and 10,000 tourism jobs. 175,000 potential visitors may not come to Australia at all, risking $1 billion of expenditure per year.” The Australia Institute study was carried out in 2016, and there have supposedly been four catastrophic bleaching events recorded since then. In addition, the news that the reef has record amounts of coral has not been widely publicized. It is thus likely that these negative attitudes identified in this study have persisted, and the calculated billion-dollar loss has materialised.

Although tourist numbers in Australia and overseas have grown rapidly over the last three decades, the growth for the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world, has been very limited (figure 2). Visitor numbers were about1.6 million in 1996, peaked in 2016 just short of 2.5 million and has now stabilised after the covid shutdowns at around 2 million in 2025. Visitor numbers are the same now as they were two decades ago – a period when there has been continuous bad publicity about the GBR.

Figure 2 Annual visitors (overwhelmingly tourist) to the GBR from 1994 to 2023.

In contrast to the virtual stasis in GBR visitor numbers, tourism around Australia has generally flourished. For example, the number of international visitors to Australia has increased by about 80% since 2000. Another iconic Australian tourist attraction, the Great Ocean Road and Twelve Apostles, has seen international tourists rise from around 100,000 in 1991 to around 600, 000 last year.⁸ Domestic Visitor numbers to Tropical North Queensland grew by around 30% between 2014 and 2024, a period when GBR visitation changed by around 10%⁹. International visitors to Sydney grew by 40% between 2009 and 2024.¹⁰ The relatively slow growth of visitors to the GBR cannot be conclusively attributed to the continuous bad publicity, and tourist attractions are notoriously affected by passing fashions. However, there is no more famous natural attraction on earth than the GBR, so it would seem highly likely that visitor numbers would be considerably higher if the true good state of the GBR was more generally known.

In this report we will presume that the bad publicity has reduced visitor numbers by around 0.5 million (around 25%). This is less than the 1 million reduction predicted by the Australia Institute survey, and is less than the growth that would be expected if the GBR had kept up with the dramatic growth in tourism in many other parts of Australia. A 0.5 million loss in tourist numbers must therefore be considered as a lower-bound estimate. In order to make estimations of tourist number loss with lower uncertainty, it would be necessary to undertake major surveys of tourists and potential tourists to gauge how their travel intentions have been affected by the bad publicity.

A reduction in tourist numbers of between 0.5 million visitors, would represent an economic loss of around 0.8 billion dollars per year using the Australia Institute’s¹¹ estimate for the value of GBR visitation of at least 3.3 billion per year (in 2015). Other data put the value of GBR tourism at $9 billion per year¹² which would yield a loss of $2.2 billion per year if tourist numbers are depressed by 0.5 million (25%). Again, being conservative, this report will use the lower figure of $800 million.

3.0 Mining ($200 Million/year)

The potential impact of mining and oil drilling on the GBR was the main driver for the declaration of the GBR as a national park in 1975¹³. In those days there were moves to drill for oil in marine waters adjacent to the reef and to extract calcium carbonate (ancient dead coral) directly from coral reefs for cement production. The threat to the reef was direct, and very close to the reef itself. The proposition of such direct mining and oil drilling was opposed by many on all side of politics. Notable among these was Sir Garfield Barwick, attorney general under Liberal Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies, who became inaugural president of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

Nowadays, there are many claims that mining will damage the GBR¹⁴, but they all rely on highly indirect and remote impacts of dubious scientific merit. Of these the effect on climate of carbon dioxide emissions from burning coal mined adjacent to the reef is best known and is often invoked as an argument to prohibit future mining of coal¹⁵. These arguments have helped cause delays and legal costs for the Adani Carmichael Mine, and are ongoing at other proposed mines in Queensland, such as Whitehaven Coal’s Winchester South mine in the Bowen Basin¹⁶. However, the cost associated with this legal action is difficult to calculate and will not be included in this report.

There is one unequivocal case where a coal mine has failed to proceed due to concerns about its impact on the GBR. The Styx Coal Project about 150 km north of Rockhampton, failed to get regulatory permission from the Federal government. Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek refused permission stating “the mine is an open-cut coal mine less than 10km from the Great Barrier Reef, and the risk of pollution and irreversible damage to the reef is very real.”¹⁷ In fact, the mine is 10 km from the headwaters of a tidal creek which flows into Broad Sound, a large and very muddy bay. The closest coral on the Great Barrier Reef is 150 km offshore. How the mine could have any significant influence on the GBR was not explained. The cancellation of this mine was not justifiable.

The Styx Coal Project, if it had been approved, would have produced roughly 3 million tonnes of coal per year and earned $4.4 billion over the 20 year mine life¹⁸. The cost per year is thus around $200 million. It remains to be seen if similar reasoning used to stop the Styx Coal Project will be used in the future against other Queensland coal mines, most of which are in GBR river catchments. The precedent has been set, and a sword-of-Damocles hangs over any future mining development between the Great Diving Range and the GBR.

4 Restriction of GBR of Fishing Industry ($40 Million per year)

The commercial fishing industry in the GBR waters has been subject to major restrictions. Reef fishery such as coral trout were restricted by zoning changes in the early 2000s, and there have been a succession of fishing licence cancellations and buy-backs. In addition, non-reef fisheries, such as prawns have also been restricted as these species are caught in the GBR marine park. More recently, species that live nowhere near the reef, such as barramundi have been restricted or closed. Barramundi are caught almost entirely in coastal creeks and rivers. This net-fishery is presently being closed.

In the following estimations, fisheries data from the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences¹⁹ is used to determine the fisheries lost due to restrictions specific to the proximity to the GBR. It concentrates on just the most important species and is therefore most likely to be a significant under-estimate of the total cost.

Barramundi: All gill-netting for Barramundi will become illegal on the east coast of Queensland in 2027. In addition, most of the Queensland Gulf of Carpentaria coast will also be closed as part of the package that the federal government agreed with UNESCO to prevent the endangered listing of the GBR. The Barramundi fishery is worth around $10 million each year.

Spanish Mackerel: Spanish Mackerel fishing was reduced from 600 tonnes down to 165 tonnes, representing a roughly $5 million reduction in value.

Coral Trout: Catch of coral trout was restricted to reduce catch by about 50% around 2005. This fishery is presently worth about $20 million a year. The reduction in catch is thus roughly $20 million.

Prawns. The total value of prawns caught in Queensland is around $100 million per year. Assuming that 25% of prawns in Queensland are caught on the GBR coast, and the catch has been roughly halved due to rezoning of fishing waters and other restrictions, the value reduction is around $10 million per year.

Total lost revenue in commercial fisheries: approximately $40 million per year.

5  Wasted government funding

Before the 1960s there were no environmental concerns about the Great Barrier Reef, and government funding for the reef was zero. However, scientific study started in earnest in the 1960 when a handful of scientists at University of Queensland, and James Cook University were appointed. It is not a coincidence that reef catastrophism started shortly afterwards. Scientists discovered crown of thorns starfish plagues which were “devastating” the reef. By the 1970s it was regularly predicted that the reef could be lost within a decade. Today there are many government-funded organisations, and individual scientists and managers who have a financial stake in GBR catastrophism.

5.1 Funding to ‘Save the GBR’ ($300 million/year)

The federal Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water has stated that for the period 2014 to 2030, $5 billion has been spent or allocated as an “investment in the Reef” to reduce pressure from climate change, agriculture and fisheries²⁰. This is roughly $300 million year.

The results of this expenditure is minimal, and was summarised in a letter to UNESCO by the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water, in February 2024. In this letter, Minister Plibersek was giving evidence for why the GBR should NOT be listed as endangered. The main achievement of the Federal government was stated to have been reducing the sediment and dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) delivered to the GBR national park, coming from rivers (since 2014). It was stated 140000 tonnes of sediment 555 tonnes of DIN had been prevented from entering the marine park due to government measures.

These figures may seem impressive, and clearly were meant to seem impressive in Plibersek’s letter, but are in fact utterly insignificant. They demonstrate a complete lack of appreciation for the huge scale of the GBR. The net sediment discharge from rivers flowing to the GBR is roughly 10 million tonnes per year²¹ or 100 million tonnes since 2014. Thus, the sediment prevented from entering the waters of the marine park has been reduced by 0.14%. Even this is an underestimate as cyclones resuspend far greater quantities sediment from the seabed than come down rivers. It has been estimated that Cyclone Yasi likely resuspended 500 million tonnes.

The reduction in nitrogen to the lagoon is similarly negligible. It is estimated that about 10000 tonnes of DIN flows from rivers each year²². Thus, the reduction in export of DIN since 2014 is only 0.5 percent. Again, this greatly over-estimates the impact of this reduction in DIN as there is 100 times more nitrogen cycling between the seabed and water in the GBR lagoon, than comes down all the rivers. The impact is thus a change of 0.005%,

Given that these two achievements were the main talking points of the letter explaining to UNESCO why the Australian government had made great strides to protect the GBR, and thus the reef should not be declared by UNESCO as endangered, it implies that other achievements were even more inconsequential. It may thus be concluded that the entire $5 billion allocated and already spent on programs to ‘save the reef’ have made no difference to the reef. Even if these programs had reached the unnatural state where ALL the sediment and DIN flowing down the rivers was prevented, it would still have a negligible impact on the reef because the wave resuspension of sediment and nutrients that has been deposited into the marine system, over thousands of years, is far more important that sediment and nutrients entering from rivers.²³ The $5 billion expenditure has thus made a negligible difference to an issue that was negligible.

5.2 Funding for Great Barrier Reef management. ($50 million)

The main management organisation for the GBR marine park is the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA). It is responsible for the GBR itself, and also the ocean between the GBR and the coast. This area, known as the GBR lagoon is between 30 and 150 kilometre wide along the entire 2000 km length of the GBR. Altogether, GBRPMA control an area similar in size to Victoria, or Germany. The inshore boundary of the marine park is usually the tidal low water mark on the coast. In addition to being responsible for the marine park, GBRPMA takes great interest in all the river catchments east of the Great Dividing Range. This is because it is claimed that sediment, pesticides and nutrients running into the GBR lagoon are impacting the GBR.²⁴

GBRMPA is responsible for licensing tourist operators that take visitors to the reef. Most tourist operations occur on a handful of reefs from the Cairns and Whitsundays region.

GBRMPA regularly makes public statements about the supposedly perilous future of the reef and states that bleaching from hot water events from climate change is the most serious threat²⁵, followed by runoff from agriculture.

The actual effort to manage the GBR is very minimal and it is very rare to ever see a GBRMPA officer on the water. Given that the GBR is in very good condition and is mostly very remote, it is doubtful that most of GBRMPA’s activity is having any effect on the reef. The fact that the reef survived perfectly well before GBRMPA was formed is an indication that it does not need to do much more than prevent major activity such as mining or oil drilling, which are illegal anyway. Some programs, such as those reducing anchor damage on individual reefs, have certainly been worthwhile although this was only ever a problem on a very small area of the reef.

But many of its programs are a great waste of money. For example, it has an Indigenous Strategy which “sets out how the Authority can work in partnership with Traditional Owners to combine their thousands of years’ expertise in Reef management with modern Marine Park management tools to help keep Sea Country heritage strong, safe and healthy.” In reality, western science has already documented the knowledge from indigenous people. Thus, the indigenous knowledge can already be applied. This program is akin to the preposterous idea that Einsteins descendants should be funded on any matter of the theoretical physics that Einstein discovered.

Every visitor on commercial vessels to the GBR pays an “environmental management charge” of around $10 per person which is are applied directly to the management of the Marine Park.²⁶ There are in the order of 2 million visitors each year so this charge is around $20 million per year.

GBRMPA’s budget is roughly $120 million each year.²⁷ Although there is a need for some management of the national park, it would seem that GBRMPA is a bloated bureaucracy that could easily be reduced. It is suggested that halving the budget would have no deleterious impact on the management on the reef. This would produce a saving of around 50 million per year.

5.3 Funding for Great Barrier Reef Science Institutions ($85 Million)

Unlike most Australian ecosystems, a considerable amount of funding is dedicated specifically to studying the GBR. Most of this research is predicated on the proposition that the GBR is endangered and needs ‘saving’. This proposition is highly questionable given the present state of the GBR having record amounts of coral. The scientific expenditure on the GBR could thus be spent more productively in other areas.

A large number of government-funded institutions, that carry out science, have an interest in the GBR. This report will only analyse expenditure within the university sector, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and at CSIRO.

5.3.1 University Research

Most universities on the east coast of Australia have academics who claim to work on GBR-related science. Queensland universities have the highest numbers. For example, James Cook University, University of Queensland and Griffith University list around 70, 70 and 50 staff respectively where the research interests include the GBR. It will be assumed here that an order of magnitude estimate of the number of academics with an interest in the GBR in the whole of Australia is about 500 academics. It is hard to gauge how much of their time they spend on this work. Most academics spend around a third of their time on research, but often have a range of interests. If it was assumed that these 500 academics spent 10% of their time on GBR research, had an average salary of $120K with an on-cost multiplier of three, then the cost of this research is roughly $20 million. This is a modest cost compared to some of the other costs listed in this report. There are very large uncertainties in this calculation, but it is still a useful order-of-magnitude estimation.

5.3.2 CSIRO

The CSIRO has 58 research scientists who are listed as having an interest in the GBR.²⁸ Assuming the average salary is around 150k with an on-cost multiplier of three, and that these 58 staff spend half their time on GBR work, the cost of their work is around $15 million.

5.3.3 Australian Institute of Marine Science

The Australian Institute of Marine science (AIMS), which is based in Townsville, was set up in 1972 with the main purpose to study the GBR. It is the biggest single institution with an interest in the GBR. The AIMS budget is roughly $100 million annually,²⁹ although about 20% of its staff are based in West Australia where AIMS has an interest in coral reefs of Western and Northern Australia.

The author worked at AIMS from 1984 to 1988 and in those days the motivation for research had little to do with ‘saving the reef’. It was largely basic science to document the GBR, and to find out about the biological, chemical and physical processes that operated. Most of AIMS research is now focused on ‘saving the reef’ from climate and other anthropogenic threats.

However, some of the AIMS work is extremely useful such as the long-term monitoring of coral that started in 1985. It is this data which demonstrates that there is little to worry about for the future of the reef.

The AIMS budget each year is around $100 million and it will be assumed for this report that around 50% of the work has little scientific value, i.e $50 million.

5.3.4 Total: all science research organisations.

The order-of-magnitude estimate of the total cost of the science organisations, where there is little return on investment is around $85 million. These funds could be far better spent on research that is more likely to be commercially useful or that helps solve a genuine environmental problem.

1. https://platogbr.com/308-2/
2. https://nesptropical.edu.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/NESP-TWQ-2.2.1-INTERIM-REPORT-1.pdfLough, J.M. and Barnes, D.J. (2000). Environmental controls on growth of the massive coral Porites. Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, 245(2), pp.225–243.
3. https://platogbr.com/308-2/
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/04/20/and-then-we-wept-scientists-say-93-percent-of-the-great-barrier-reef-now-bleached/
5. https://www.dw.com/en/half-of-australia-great-barrier-reef-corals-have-died-since-the-1990s-study-reveals/a-55269668
6. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/environment/australias-great-barrier-reef-hit-by-record-bleaching/articleshow/109372039.cms
7. https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/great-barrier-bleached/
8. Tisdell, C and Wilsall, C., (2002). World Heritage Listing of Australian Natural Sites: Tourism Stimulus and its economic value. Economic AnalysIs & Policy Vo1.32 No.2. Special lssue. June 2002And https://roadgenius.com.au/statistics/tourism/australia/great-ocean-road-12-apostles/
9. https://tourism.tropicalnorthqueensland.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/Domestic-drive-and-air-data-TTNQ-YE-Mar-24.pdf
10. https://camperchamp.com.au/statistics/australia/sydney-tourism/https://roadgenius.com.au/statistics/tourism/australia/sydney/
11. https://australiainstitute.org.au/report/great-barrier-bleached/
12. Note. Other reports give far higher values for GBR tourism than 3.3 million. For example, the GBR foundation states that GBR tourism contributed $9 billion to the economy (https://www.barrierreef.org/news/media-release/value-of-the-reef ). A reduction in numbers of half a million visitors, based on this figure would result in a loss of $1.8 billion.
13. https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/barrier-reef-marine-park#:~:text=On%2021%20January%201970%20the,be%20provided%20by%20trade%20unionists.
14. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/aug/01/-sp-great-barrier-reef-and-coal-mine-could-kill-it
15. https://www.acf.org.au/our-fight-to-stop-australias-largest-new-coal-mine-goes-to-courtandhttp://envlaw.com.au/carmichael-coal-mine-case/
16. https://www.acf.org.au/our-fight-to-stop-australias-largest-new-coal-mine-goes-to-court
17. https://x.com/i/status/1623179206447484928
18. https://cqcoal.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/A10a%20-%20Economic%20Assessment%20Rev%202%20-%20No%20name%20change.pdf
19. https://www.agriculture.gov.au/abares/research-topics/fisheries/fisheries-and-aquaculture-statistics
20. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/parks-heritage/great-barrier-reef/protecting/our-investments#daff-page-main
21. McCloskey, G.L., Baheerathan, R., Dougall, C., Ellis, R., Bennett, F.R., Waters, D., Darr, S., Fentie, B., Hateley, L.R., Askildsen, M., 2021. Modelled estimates of fine sediment and particulate nutrients delivered from the Great Barrier Reef catchments. Mar Pollut Bull 165, 112163. 751 https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2021.112163
22. McCloskey et al., 2021 McCloskey, G.L. Baheerathan, R. Dougall, C. Bennett, F. Darr, S. Fentie, B. Hateley, L.R. Askildsen, M. Waters, D. Ellis, R. 2021a (In review-a). Modelled estimates of dissolved inorganic nitrogen exported to the Great Barrier Reef. Marine Pollution Bulletin 2021
23. State of the Great Barrier Reef 2024. Australian Environment Foundation. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ba8d0e1d07c00ab0623bb8/t/65eac0f6f7c2fd3373086741/1770899016836/State+of+the+GBR+2024+final.pdf
24. This claim is disputed. See State of the Great Barrier Reef 2024. Australian Environment Foundation. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/56ba8d0e1d07c00ab0623bb8/t/65eac0f6f7c2fd3373086741/1770899016836/State+of+the+GBR+2024+final.pdf
25. https://www2.gbrmpa.gov.au/learn/threats/climate-change
26. https://www2.gbrmpa.gov.au/access/environmental-management-charge#:~:text=The%20funds%20received%20from%20the,management%20of%20the%20Marine%20Park
27. https://www.transparency.gov.au/publications/agriculture-water-and-the-environment/great-barrier-reef-marine-park-authority/great-barrier-reef-marine-park-authority-annual-report-2022-23/5.-financial-report/independent-auditor’s-report-and-financial-statements
28. Using a search of the expertise and research interests of CSIRO employees listed on the CSIRO web site.
29. Using just the government funded component of the AIMS budget. See https://www.aims.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-11/AIMS%20Annual%20Report%202024-25.pdf