Australia for the first time has rejected a coal mining application based on environmental law, with the government minister citing the open-pit mine's potential harm to the nearby Great Barrier Reef.
On Wednesday, Australia's Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek announced her decision to prevent the Central Queensland Coal Project from being excavated northwest of the Queensland state town of Rockhampton and less than 10 kilometers from the Great Barrier Reef off the northeast Australian coast.
The project would have had unacceptable impacts on fresh water in the area and potentially on fragile seagrass meadows that feed dugongs and provide fish breeding grounds, she said.
Corals on the Great Barrier Reef are visible below the waves above Moore Reef in Gunggandji Sea Country off the coast of Queensland in eastern Australia, November 14, 2022. /CFP
The open-pit mine has an estimated excavation capacity of 10 million metric tons of coal annually for 25 years.
Plibersek said the risk of "pollution and irreversible damage to the reef is very real."
"The Great Barrier Reef is responsible for about $4.2 billion dollars worth of economic activity every year, about 64,000 jobs," Plibersek said. "Given the science before me, it became apparent that the risks were simply too great."
A United Nations-backed mission recommended in November, 2022 that the Great Barrier Reef be added to the list of endangered World Heritage sites, warning that without "ambitious, rapid and sustained" climate action the world's largest coral reef is in peril.
(Cover image via CFP)
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