Great Barrier Reef: Conservation and Tourism

This assignment examines the multifaceted issues confronting the Great Barrier Reef, a UNESCO World Heritage site. It delves into the impact of climate change, pollution, and tourism on the reef's delicate ecosystem. Students are tasked with analyzing various sustainable tourism strategies aimed at mitigating these threats while promoting responsible visitor experiences. The analysis draws upon academic research, government reports, and case studies from Australia's Great Barrier Reef region.

Running head: BUSINESS COMMUNICATION SKILLS
Report on environmental problems in Great Barrier Reef, Australia
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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Executive Summary
Environmental challenges are a matter of serious concern towards ecological biodiversity.
Conscious attitude in this direction enhances the corporate social responsibility of the personnel.
Apart from this, it also helps the personnel to create trust, loyalty and dependence for them
within the customers. A typical example in this direction is organizing seminars, lectures and
presentations on the environmental challenges, which Great barrier Reef is facing currently. This
would act as a platform for the employees to voice out their opinions. Maintaining consistency in
organizing these events would enhance the communication skills of the employees.

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Communication in response to the climactic change in Great barrier Reef....................................3
Recommendations............................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
Communication is one of an important aspect in business. Providing enough
opportunities to the employees to expose their communication skills and abilities possesses
flexibility to bestow “foreign market penetration” on the companies and organizations. Providing
opportunity to the employees to give presentations on topics such as impact of environmental
challenges on the business activities proves beneficial for the organizations (Mills et al. 2015).
This is in terms of gaining an insight into the perspectives of the employees regarding the issues.
This assignment attempts to uphold the contribution of Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
Authority and the Australian government in regulating these environmental challenges. One
of the major highlights of the assignment is the insight to Terry Hughes’ Conversation, which
informs the public about the harmful policies regarding mining and political unrest.
Communication in response to the climactic change in Great barrier Reef
Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest reef. The location of Coral Sea, off coast of
Queensland in Northeast Australia, is a great attraction among the tourists. It provides
mesmerizing experience to the people through the possession of 2900 individual reefs and 940
islands and cays. The length of these reefs is as long as 2300 kilometres. The Reef covers an area
of 344,400 square kilometres. Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) is entrusted
with the responsibility of monitoring the activities of the reef (Gbrmpa.gov.au 2018).
In the report published by GBRMPA in 2014, the issues of climactic change; degrading
water quality due to land based run offs; coastal developments and overfishing activities gets
preference. Along with this, storms, bleaching of the corals and acidification of the oceans are

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also a major issue of concern in the Great Barrier Reef. Along with this, extinction of dugong
species is a major concern, projected through the report.
1989 was the era when degrading water quality was first noticed in Great Barrier Reef.
Discovery of dead and injured fish bodies made the waters of Port of Gladstone polluted
(Gbrmpa.gov.au 2018). Rise in the temperature of water along with increased salinity, sediment
concentrations and amount of pesticide control were the immediate impacts of the degraded
quality of water. The marine live forms were adversely affected due to over-exploitation of the
sediment concentrations in the critical thresholds. The report published in 1995 displays
noticeable decline of the water by 10 metres, especially in the catchment area of Great Barrier
Reef. As a matter of specification, the acidic sedimentation process is the major cause behind
this degradation. The main source from where the water comes is the farms (Eberhard, Brodie
and Waterhouse 2017).
This water surrounds the industrial areas, where the main business activity is produce
refined quality cottons, dairy, cattle grazing and horticultural activities. Out of these, sugar cane
farming is the primary occupation in the wet tropical region. On the other hand, cattle grazing is
the staple occupation of the dry regions. Both these activities pose as a greatest threat to the
degrading water quality. Copper is one of the other industrial pollutants to the waters of Great
Barrier Reef. Mixing of copper in these waters has stalled the development of the coral polyps.
Floods were the immediate outcome of high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous in the
inner surface area of the reef. Over grazing along with excessive utilization of pesticides and
fertilizers has polluted the farms in the areas adjacent to the Reef (Pickering et al. 2017).
According to the survey reports, there has been an increase of 800% in the mud pollution and

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3000% increase in the inorganic nitrogen pollution since the advent of European farming
practices within the Australian threshold. Along with this, there has been noticeable decline in
the population of coral eating crowns of Thorn Starfish. This escalation has resulted in the loss of
66% of corals, which had been used as covering for the samples reefs in 2000. Application of
poor quality water with excess nutrients has infected the corals with diseases. Under extreme
conditions, the corals collapse.
Request for permission from Northern Queensland Council in 2014, projects the use of
nickel by politician Clive Palmer. Under his supervision, nitrate laid water was released by the
Great Barrier Reef in 2005-2006. As a matter of specification, this release resulted in the
emergence of 516 tonnes of toxic waste. The permission sought by Queensland Nickel projects
their plans for releasing this water consecutively for three months (Cvitanovic et al. 2015).
Granting the permission would have exceeded the acceptable level of metals and contaminants
by 100 times. GBRMPA had issued a threatening letter to the council by asking for paying $6.4
billion compensation if authority is exerted over the actions of the council. In response to this,
the GBRMPA reverted back to the council by seeking options regarding release of the materials,
which do not contribute to the environmental pollution.
After investigating the current situation of Great Barrier Reef, the members of WHC
published a report for gaining the attention of UNESCO. This report degrades the personality of
the managers of Great Barrier Reef in terms of exposing negligent attitude towards adding to the
existing ports in the threshold of Abbot Point, Gladstone, Hay point and Townsville (Mills et al.
2015). In December 2013, Australian environment minister, Greg Hunt sent his approval for the
plan consisting of dredging. Within this dredging, three shipping terminals would be created as a
part of the coalport construction. Approval and consent was given to the creation of 3 million

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cubic metres of dredged seabed for dumping the wastes in the areas adjacent to Great Barrier
Reef.
On 31st January 2014, GBRMPA issued permission for dumping 3 million cubic metres
seabed from Abbot Point, situated in the north of Bowen. The permission granted the import and
export activities, which was to be executed in Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. The personnel of
GBRMPA knew that this dredge would add to the potential harms to the environment- spoiling
the quality of land, churning of the sea floor, especially in the areas, which have air exposure
(Shields, Fischer and Burke 2015). The response issued by GBRMPA included online petitions
opposing the permission. Written communication was followed as 250000 signatures were
registered in addition to the online petitions.
One of the other aspects here is the masterpiece Conversation, written by Terry Hughes, a
Federation Fellow of ARC centre of Excellence for coral Reef studies in James Cook University.
This masterpiece came from the minds of Hughes in 2014 for informing the public about the
harmful and orthodox policies introduced by the government. Along with this, the piece of work
consists of the persistent mining issues, aggravating the environmental risks of the Reef (Gurney
et al. 2017).
Recommendations
If the petitions are sent online, it would be an innovation in the field of communication
practiced by Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority. These petitions would act as a platform
for the Australian public to voice out their opinions about the environmental degradation.
Viewing it from the other perspective, these petitions align with the characteristics of verbal
communication between the public and the authority of the marine park at Great Barrier Reef. In

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response to the confirmation of the dumping dredged spoilage, Dr Russell Reichelt stated the
limitation of the port development to the existing ports. In this approval, 47 new environmental
conditions were imposed on the marine park. These included- water quality management plan,
heritage management plans and establishment of independent dredges and disposable technical
advice panel. In the process of constructing the plans, involvement of the community people is
an innovative proposal, as it would enhance the perspective of the marine park personnel
regarding the preservation of ecological biodiversity.
In response to dumping issues, environmental agency, Greenpeace introduced Save the
Reef campaign. Asking the public for donations proved beneficial in providing financial
assistance to the personnel to restore the ecological diversity of the reef. Political activists funded
for indulging in alliance with the members of Environmental Defenders Office of Queensland.
This alliance upholds the communication between political activists and the members of North
Queensland conservation council for restoring the greenery of the marine park. Keeping the
intentions clear would enable the personnel to contribute towards preservation of the
environment. On the other hand, commercializing the initiative would act as a compromise with
the aspect of saving the environment from degrading.
Partnership between World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) and Australian Marine
Conservation Society (AMCS) resulted in the financial flexibility for the marine park authority.
The major drive behind this is the collection of online donations for supporting a fighting team.
If the marine park authority had introduced special offers, discounts and schemes on donation
amount, more customers would have expressed their interest for funding this initiative.
Partnership with Ben and Jerry ice cream was an innovative initiative for making the public
aware of the rising concerns in the reef.

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These recommendations, if approached rationally would seem flexible in restoring the
lost attraction of Great Barrier Reef. However, much more needs to be done for reaching ti the
benchmark level of performance. For example, the marine park authority can engage in
partnership with the travel agencies. Skilled and qualified guides can be appointed for helping
the tourists to understand the extent to which the reef is encountering challenges. Along with
this, organizing cultural shows would help the marine park authorities to promote the cultural
heritage of Australia. For this, the tribal people can be contacted for performing. This would
result in written as well as verbal communication between the tribal communities and the marine
park authorities. Addition of seafood to this context, would expose the public to the dynamics of
the Australian cuisine. Cultural shows, food and the tours can be combined and offered as a
package for the foreign tourists. The constructed plans need to be consistently evaluated for
upgrading the standard and quality of the performance towards restoring the greenery of Great
Barrier Reef.
Along with this, the marine park authority needs to abide by the standards and protocols
of the environmental directives. This would help the personnel to avert the illegal scandals and
issues, which would degrade the reputation of the reef. Along with this, compliance would help
in achieving trust, loyalty and dependence from the customers and clients.

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References
Cvitanovic, C., Hobday, A.J., van Kerkhoff, L. and Marshall, N.A., 2015. Overcoming barriers
to knowledge exchange for adaptive resource management; the perspectives of Australian marine
scientists. Marine policy, 52, pp.38-44.
Cvitanovic, C., Marshall, N., Wilson, S., Dobbs, K. and Hobday, A., 2014. Perceptions of
Australian marine protected area managers regarding the role, importance, and achievability of
adaptation for managing the risks of climate change. Ecology and Society, 19(4).
Eberhard, R., Brodie, J. and Waterhouse, J., 2017. Managing Water Quality for the Great Barrier
Reef. In Decision Making in Water Resources Policy and Management (pp. 265-289).
Esparon, M., Stoeckl, N., Farr, M., & Larson, S. (2015). The significance of environmental
values for destination competitiveness and sustainable tourism strategy making: insights from
Australia's Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 23(5), 706-
725.
Gbrmpa.gov.au (2018). About us. Available at: www.gbrmpa.gov.au [Accessed on 18th January
2018]
Goldberg, J., Birtles, A., Marshall, N., Curnock, M., Case, P. and Beeden, R., 2017. The role of
Great Barrier Reef tourism operators in addressing climate change through strategic
communication and direct action. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, pp.1-19.

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Gurney, G.G., Blythe, J., Adams, H., Adger, W.N., Curnock, M., Faulkner, L., James, T. and
Marshall, N.A., 2017. Redefining community based on place attachment in a connected
world. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 114(38), pp.10077-10082.
Hedge, P., Molloy, F., Sweatman, H., Hayes, K.R., Dambacher, J.M., Chandler, J., Bax, N.,
Gooch, M., Anthony, K. and Elliot, B., 2017. An integrated monitoring framework for the Great
Barrier Reef World Heritage Area. Marine Policy, 77, pp.90-96.
Howes, M., Tangney, P., Reis, K., Grant-Smith, D., Heazle, M., Bosomworth, K. and Burton, P.,
2015. Towards networked governance: improving interagency communication and collaboration
for disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in Australia. Journal of
Environmental Planning and Management, 58(5), pp.757-776.
Marshall, N., Adger, N., Attwood, S., Brown, K., Crissman, C., Cvitanovic, C., De Young, C.,
Gooch, M., James, C., Jessen, S. and Johnson, D., 2017. Empirically derived guidance for social
scientists to influence environmental policy. PloS one, 12(3), p.e0171950.
Mills, M., Weeks, R., Pressey, R.L., Gleason, M.G., Eisma-Osorio, R.L., Lombard, A.T., Harris,
J.M., Killmer, A.B., White, A. and Morrison, T.H., 2015. Real-world progress in overcoming the
challenges of adaptive spatial planning in marine protected areas. Biological Conservation, 181,
pp.54-63.
Pickering, J.A., Hong, J., Hong, D. and Kealley, M., 2017. Applying behavioural science to the
Queensland sugar cane industry and its relationship to the Great Barrier Reef. Rural Extension
and Innovation Systems Journal, 13(2), p.1.

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Shields, K., Fischer, A. and Burke, C., 2015. Toward an improved ecosystem based management
approach: incorporating catchment characteristics into better management and planning of the
Great Barrier Reef marine ecosystem. Journal of Environmental Planning and
Management, 58(7), pp.1270-1290.