Recommendations made after Chinese coal carrier the Shen Neng 1 ran aground are yet to be implemented

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

The government is failing to protect the reef from the effects of shipping disasters, according to environmental lawyers, who say inaction to secure remediation funds will become a bigger problem as shipping traffic increases.

The issue could cause a problem for Australia when it reports to the Unesco world heritage committee within the next two weeks, on the state of the reef and how it is acting to protect it.

When the Chinese coal carrier the Shen Neng 1 ran aground on the Great Barrier Reef in 2010, it scraped a three-kilometre scar along the surface of the reef and left behind tonnes of toxic paint.

Cleaning up the mess was delayed for six years, because the government didn’t have any funds available for restitution of “non-pollution” damage and the government had to initiate a lengthy court battle.

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In a press release announcing an out-of-court settlement in September, Russell Reichelt, the chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said: “It is clearly unsatisfactory that it has taken more than six years to reach this point of settlement with the owners of Shen Neng 1, the Shenzhen Energy Transport Company.”

But that unacceptable delay had been acknowledged by government agencies as far back as 2014 and recommendations made back then have still not been implemented.

In October 2014 the North-East Shipping Management Plan was published. It included a discussion of the problem and made a recommendation: “GBRMPA and AMSA [Australian Maritime Safety Authority] to investigate means of securing funding for restitution of non-pollution damage to coral reefs following a shipping incident.”

In an exclusive interview with Guardian Australia, Reichelt said there had been discussions about trying to achieve that aim but nothing concrete had been developed.

He said the likely scenario would be some sort of “sovereign fund” that could be drawn on immediately if there was an accident, allowing clean-up to occur before the ship owners were pursued for compensation.

But he said the system was legally complex and the issue of shipping damage a serious one but not as high on his priority list as climate change and water quality. “So don’t hold your breath.”

The recommendation in the shipping plan forms part of the government’s Reef 2050 long-term sustainability plan, which the government produced to avoid the reef being included on Unesco’s “list of world heritage in danger”.

The government is required on its implementation of the plan to report to Unesco’s World Heritage Centre in less than two weeks and appears to have done nothing on the increasing risk from shipping accidents, said Ariane Wilkinson, a lawyer at Environmental Justice Australia.

“Two years ago, the North-East Shipping Management Group made it clear that there must be sufficient money available to immediately clean up damage to the Great Barrier Reef from future ship groundings but nothing has been done,” Wilkinson said.

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“With the number of ships travelling through the reef only increasing, especially if the port of Abbot Point is expanded to ship coal from the proposed Carmichael mine straight through the reef, the next Shen Neng disaster is not a question of ‘if’ but a question of ‘when’.”

Noni Austin, an Australian lawyer at US-based Earthjustice, said the world heritage committee was watching closely to make sure Australia was doing all it could to protect the Great Barrier Reef.

“In December this year, the federal government must report to the committee on its progress in implementing the Reef 2050 plan, in which it committed to improving capacity to respond to shipping incidents,” Austin said.

“The government prepared the Reef 2050 plan after the world heritage committee had such serious concerns about the future of the reef that it considered whether to place the reef on the ‘list of world heritage in danger’.

“Since that time, the coral bleaching catastrophe killed almost a quarter of coral on the reef. If the government cannot demonstrate that sufficient money is available to immediately clean up the next shipping disaster, then it is simply failing to protect our reef.”

Reichelt said GBRMPA was taking the issue seriously and had a number of meetings with the Department of Environment and Energy.

“I think clearly if we get some movement on some new regime for faster response, that would be a good thing,” he said.

Reichelt said he doubted Unesco would raise the issue directly in upcoming meetings, since shipping was not one of the headline issues.

“I was at a meeting of world heritage property managers a couple of weeks ago and they didn’t ask me about that,” Reichelt said. “They were mainly worried about climate change and water quality and illegal fishing and other things.

“And the other thing is, when you look around the world, I don’t think there are any places with higher shipping standards.”