What is the Great Barrier Reef?

The Great Barrier Reef is one of Australia's most internationally recognised symbols and the centrepiece of the country's natural heritage in the public imagination. Stretching about 2,300 kilometres along the coast of Queensland, it is celebrated as a global icon of marine biodiversity, an economic engine for Queensland tourism, and a barometer of how Australia is responding to climate change.

The reef carries enormous symbolic weight in Australian culture. It appears on Queensland tourism advertising, on the back of the Australian fifty-cent commemorative coin, in countless children's books and documentaries, and as the setting for popular films including Finding Nemo (2003) and Finding Dory (2016) which drew international audiences to the reef's clownfish and anemone systems. The reef is the largest single image of Australia carried in the global popular imagination outside the Sydney Opera House and Uluru.

Indigenous Australian connection to the reef is deep. About 70 Traditional Owner groups, including the Yidinji, Bandjin, Wuthathi, Meriam, and Kuuku Ya'u peoples, hold cultural and spiritual responsibilities for sea country across the reef. The Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan, developed jointly with the Australian and Queensland governments, includes formal Traditional Owner participation in management decisions, and the Indigenous Sea Country Plans give traditional owners a stronger voice in the protection of cultural sites.

The reef has also become a political symbol of climate policy. Mass coral bleaching events in 1998, 2002, 2016, 2017, 2020, 2022, and 2024, all caused by warmer-than-average ocean temperatures, have made the reef a touchstone for discussions of emissions reductions, fossil fuel approvals, and adaptation funding. UNESCO has repeatedly threatened to list the reef as World Heritage in danger, most recently in 2021 and 2023, prompting successive Australian governments to commit billions to water quality, predator control, and renewable energy.