Multiple and cumulative impacts on the GBR: assessment of current status and development of improved approaches for management: Final Report Project 1.6

The outlook of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) was recently assessed as poor and declining (Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority [GBRMPA], 2014a; GBRMPA, 2014b). Impacts on the Region’s values do not occur in isolation but overlap in time and space, thus reducing the overall resilience and health of the Reef. Understanding cumulative pressures and their impacts has become a priority for environmental policy, management and conservation globally. In Australia, a fuller understanding of cumulative impacts from global and local stressors, and the ability to attribute those impacts to specific drivers and activities, is now a priority, as reflected in the Reef 2050 Long-Term Sustainability Plan. Despite such prioritisation, reef managers currently rely largely on qualitative tools to assess risks from cumulative impacts associated with development proposals (GBRMPA, 2009). This Report focuses on coral reef environments and provides: (i) a comprehensive review and synthesis of existing tools and qualitative and quantitative studies that describe the cumulative impacts of local and global pressures on reef organisms and processes, (ii) an overview of important knowledge gaps and future research priorities, and (iii) a roadmap to develop a practical framework (incorporating quantitative approaches for assessing risk of multiple stressors) to support the assessment and management of cumulative impacts on the GBR. Publisher statement: Multiple and cumulative impacts on the GBR: assessment of current status and development of improved approaches for management is licensed by the Australian Institute of Marine Science for use under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Australia licence. For licence conditions see: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/