The Great Barrier Reef will not be listed as endangered but will remain under watch, UNESCO has ruled.

The UN's World Heritage Committee has adopted a draft decision to leave the reef off its "in-danger" list at a meeting in Bonn, Germany.

The ruling comes three years after UNESCO first threatened to add the natural wonder to the list of shame.

But the reef will remain under UNESCO's watch, with Australia required to provide an update on its Reef 2050 plan to the World Heritage Centre by December 1, 2016.

Prior to handing down their decision, World Heritage Committee delegates commended Australia's efforts in developing the Reef 2050 protection plan, which bans the dumping at sea of dredge spoil, limits port development and focuses on cleaning up water running onto the reef.

Deputy Premier Jackie Trad, who travelled to Bonn for the meeting, said the implementation of the Reef 2050 plan was critical.

"The Reef 2050 long-term sustainability plan is essential to keeping this natural wonder off the endangered list," she said.

Conservation groups say Australia has been placed on probation when it comes to management of the reef as failure to improvements in its health could put it at risk of an "in-danger" listing in 2020.

WWF Australia CEO Dermot O'Gorman said the decision acknowledged Australia's recent promises to strengthen protection of the reef but made clear the promises alone would not be enough.

"WWF welcomes this strong decision, Australia is on probation and the real work to turn around the decline of the reef starts now," he said.

Greenpeace warned the Great Barrier Reef would remain in danger until the threat from coal and climate change is removed.

"Until the plans for the massive coal mine and port expansion are dropped, it's impossible to take Australia's claims that they are protecting the reef seriously," Greenpeace's Jess Panegyres said.

But Queensland Resources Council CEO Michael Roche took aim at Greenpeace, saying he was pleased to see the UNESCO ruling had not been diverted by the "outrageous lies and distortions of some activist organisation".

"We know the activists' reef campaign has been about shutting down the Queensland coal and gas industries, not about protecting the reef," he said.

At the World Heritage Committee meeting, Federal Environment Minister Greg Hunt announced an additional $8 million for enhanced reef monitoring.

He also told delegates that projected investment for managing and protecting reef totalled over $2 billion in the coming decade. An investment baseline released on Wednesday evening showed all tiers of government, the private and philanthropic sectors had invested over $485 million in 2014/15 alone.