Partnering with organisations both in Australia and globally, Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef is a network of individuals, organisations and businesses with a mission to protect and conserve the Great Barrier Reef and coral reefs around the world.
The Cairns-based startup sits at the heart of the Great Barrier Reef and as such has been a highly motivated and effective network organisation across the entire reef community, from tourism operators to researchers, businesses and conservation groups.
Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef is led by Andy Ridley, who co-founded and developed Earth Hour into an organisation reaching hundreds of millions of people in more than 7000 cities, and then went on to evolve pioneering Amsterdam-based organisation Circle Economy from a startup to a sustainable organisation.
Following the 2016 mass bleaching event on the Great Barrier Reef, Andy returned to Australia to lead and develop the newly formed Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef into a new breed of conservation organisation. After a few months of intense work, the organisation officially launched in August 2017 and has been building momentum, brand awareness and legitimacy ever since.
“Our focus is on collaboration, education and collective action. From actions to living a net zero life to citizen science and world-leading research, we’re highlighting all the incredible things happening on the Great Barrier Reef and using this inspiration to motivate action and engagement. Achieving net zero emissions, critical to the future of the Great Barrier Reef, is at the core of all we do,” says Andy.
“Being less than three years old, we're still quite small but it does allow us to be agile, adaptive and able to quickly shift focus and resources when new or unexpected opportunities arise.
“We’ve brought together a unique and unusual team of social entrepreneurs, local businesses, leading reef scientists and other organisations inspired to create change.”
Half a billion people across the planet depend on coral reefs for food, income and coastal protection. But the coral reefs globally are at risk of collapse due to climate change and localised threats such as water quality, overfishing and marine pollution.
“The Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest and most diverse, is still very much alive but it’s under major stress. We are focusing on a solutions-focused, empowering message of action and hope,” Andy says.
“We see ourselves as a 21st century conservation organisation built to be collaborative and open source everything. We’re bringing together world-leading research, tourism, communities, industry, media and conservation, and working on projects aimed to raise awareness of the issues impacting the Great Barrier Reef and directly lead to action both in reducing emissions and building resilience against the onset of climate change.
“Mobilising a global audience to take action to achieve net zero emissions is fundamental to what we do, and then go even further to become carbon negative.”
The Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef team has had a lot of highlights, including working with an iconic creator of children’s television.
“Some of our greatest highlights have included partnering with Nickelodeon on a global kids education program, hosting media and ambassadors out on the Great Barrier Reef, working with incredible reef scientists and operators on projects like #spawningGBR, helping to bring conservation issues like plastics to the mainstream, launching our Reef Tracks platform on BBC’s Blue Planet Live and getting to regularly dive at incredible reef sites,” Andy says.
Their biggest challenges have been around funding and changing opinions.
“Like all startups we have struggled to secure regular funding and resources. We also face problems with people around the world thinking that the Great Barrier Reef is already dead, which it definitely is not and the hyper-political nature of the climate change conversation in Australia,” Andy says.
This year is on track to be another huge one for the Citizens of the Great Barrier Reef team, which is rapidly growing.
“We’ve just launched the latest addition to our digital platform, Oceanpedia, an encyclopedia of incredible video content from our friends at Biopixel, with detailed species and conservation information. It is intended as the go-to resource for school projects and all things Great Barrier Reef and ultimately, the oceans,” Andy says.
“We are the driving force behind a major circular economy project for Far North Queensland, aimed at revolutionising the approach to active sustainability, driving towards net zero emissions and ultimately for the region to become carbon negative.
“And in spring 2020 we launched a massive and highly ambitious citizen science project, the Great Reef Census, a world-first effort to survey the entire Great Barrier Reef. We worked with a whole range of people from universities to superyachts to tech companies and tourism operators to make it happen. The main aim is to provide useful data for research and conservation efforts. But also vital is to raise awareness of how the Great Barrier Reef is being impacted by climate change and to engage as many people as possible in its protection.”
