Australia’s government has pledged to spend a billion Australian dollars ($904 million) over nine years on improving the health of the Great Barrier Reef – a move the country’s prime minister says will also help protect tourism operators and hospitality providers in the Queensland communities that “are at the heart of the reef economy.”

The proactive move comes after the country was able to defer an attempt by UNESCO last July to downgrade the reef’s World Heritage status to “in danger” because of damage caused by climate change. However, UNESCO has sought more information from Australia and the question will be back on the World Heritage Committee’s agenda at its next annual meeting in June.

The reef – the planet’s largest living structure, made up of 2,900 individual reefs and 900 islands, and one of the seven natural wonders of the world – has suffered significantly from coral bleaching caused by unusually warm ocean temperatures in 2016, 2017 and 2020. The bleaching damaged two-thirds of the coral.

Of the funding, AU$580 ($524) million will go toward working with land managers along Australia’s northeast coast to remediate erosion, improve land conditions and reduce nutrient and pesticide runoff.

Another AU$253 ($289)million will support the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, which manages the world’s largest coral reef ecosystem, in efforts to reduce threats from the crown-of-thorns starfish and to prevent illegal fishing.

And AU$93 ($84) million is slated for research to make the reef more resilient and to boost adaptation strategies.

However, the opposition Labour Party’s deputy leader Richard Marles dismissed the funding announcement as posturing and critics argue the investment is a bid to improve the ruling conservative coalition’s green credentials ahead of looming elections while doing nothing to change the greatest threat to the coral: rising ocean temperatures.

“You cannot be serious about supporting the Great Barrier Reef if you are not serious about action on climate change. (Prime Minister) Scott Morrison is not,” Marles said.

Labour says Australia would set a more ambitious target of reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 43% by the end of the decade if the government changes hands in elections due by May.

Morrison was widely criticized at a UN climate summit in Scotland in November over his government’s target of reducing Australia’s emissions by only 26% to 28% below 2005 levels by 2030.