There is no such thing as a free lunch
The Great Barrier Reef is facing an existential threat of our own making. We know what the solution is but our current governance around the Reef is inadequate to meet the challenge.
We can’t speak truth to power; science does not guide our decision making; and we can’t acknowledge that current economic priorities (and vested interests) mean that “the best managed reef ecosystems in the world” is being hung out to bleach.
Transformation is about creating a new and different system. Transformation is enormously challenging as the existing system has a lot of inertia and sunk investment. Transformation is one of the most overused and abused terms in the realm of sustainability. For transformation to occur, resilience thinking says there are three important factors needed: to get beyond denial, to have optional systems to move towards, and to have the capacity to normalize these options.