Agriculture Pollution within Australia

Throughout the world, there are only a hand full of countries that are known to have high levels of biodiversity. To be precise there are 17 countries in total, and they are known as "megadiversity" countries. Altogether, these 17 countries actually hold about 2/3 of the worlds biodiversity and one of these countries just so happens to be Australia. With Australia not having a very large population, compared to many other countries there size, they haven't had to clear much of there land for infrastructure which kept there biodiversity quite high. However, this is only on their land. You see off the coast of Queensland (top right corner of the country) there is a very well known and once beautiful environment called the Great Barrier Reefs which are actually the world's largest coral reef. Although as many people know, the coral reefs throughout the world are in grave trouble and if humankind doesn't act fast we will lose them for good. Sadly, this also includes the Great Barrier Reef. 

A large environmental problem impacting Australia today is there use of pesticides for there agriculture. The Australian government has recognized this as a major problem, because "the increased runoff of sediment, nutrients and contaminants from the land has lowered coastal water quality and marine ecosystem health across northern Australia, including the Great Barrier Reefs." Increased sedimentation on the coastal reefs have reduced the clarity in coastal waters, restricts the growth of light-dependent plants & animals, stimulates agal growth on reefs &  in reef water, increases the occurrence of coral disease, and possibly may influence the crown-of-thorns starfish outbreaks happening. Within recent years, AIMS whom has well documented the Great Barrier Reef for the past 25 years through research, has discovered that several reef foundation species are actually highly sensitive to herbicides. For instance, the chart below from FAOSTAT shows the increase in Australia's herbicide use from 1992 to 2006:

  

The chart shows that within 2006 Australia was using well over 20 thousand tonnes of herbicides on their agriculture products. However, on the bright side, Australia has set acts into place in order to make a change. One of them is the Reef Water Quality Protection Plan, which is attempting to set a world-best standard for minimizing human water quality impacts within their tropical reef waters.