SYDNEY, Australia — Leading scientists in Australia and abroad have expressed concern that a new United Nations report about the impact of climate change on dozens of World Heritage sites is absent a chapter describing damage to the Great Barrier Reef, after the Australian government requested that the section be cut.

“I was amazed,” the lead author of the report, Adam Markham, deputy director of climate and energy programs at the Union of Concerned Scientists, said by telephone.

The Australian government requested that the chapter be removed from the report, issued by Unesco and the United Nations Environment Program on Thursday, so that further accounts of damage to the reef, the world’s largest coral ecosystem, would not adversely affect tourism.

In a statement on Friday, the Department of the Environment said “experience had shown that negative comments about the status of World Heritage-listed properties impacted on tourism.” The statement went on to say that the department did not support any of the country’s World Heritage-listed properties being included in “such a publication.’’