McLaren Racing and Great Barrier Reef Foundation Partner to Revolutionise Coral Reef Restoration
McLaren Racing and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation have joined forces in an initiative aimed at accelerating coral reef restoration on an unprecedented scale. This collaboration leverages McLaren’s Accelerator program, which translates the insights and expertise from the high-speed world of motorsport into practical applications. Together with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation and its consortium of partners, the goal is to expedite and expand the deployment of heat-tolerant corals.
Coral reefs, among the most vulnerable ecosystems globally, face the challenge of adapting to rising ocean temperatures. Recognising that reducing emissions alone is insufficient to secure the future of coral reefs, this partnership seeks to build a comprehensive toolkit of solutions to restore and enhance their resilience to climate change.
The Great Barrier Reef Foundation, in conjunction with leading science agencies and universities across Australia, has been addressing these challenges through the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program. While considerable progress has been made, the complexity of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem requires overcoming significant science and engineering hurdles. The involvement of McLaren Racing at this crucial scaling juncture represents a potential game-changer.
Anna Marsden, Managing Director of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, stated, “Climate change is the number one threat to the Great Barrier Reef. We need to urgently restore damaged reefs and enhance the resilience of the ecosystem. Through the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, we’ve pioneered world-leading techniques that revolutionise reef restoration. Our next challenge is to solve significant science and engineering bottlenecks that will allow us to scale up this critical work in a closing window of opportunity.”
“The Great Barrier Reef Foundation is excited to partner with McLaren to leverage the team’s elite engineering skills to help accelerate coral reef restoration at a scale and speed never before attempted.”
Kim Wilson, Director of Sustainability at McLaren Racing, added, “At McLaren Racing we have committed to achieving net zero by 2040 and to play our part in line with climate science to tackling climate change. A big part of that is making sure that we reduce emissions across all our operations and supply chain, but we know that’s not enough. We also have to do something about the existing carbon in the earth’s atmosphere, damaged ecosystems and biodiversity loss. We’re delighted to be partnering with the Great Barrier Reef Foundation which is providing tangible and credible solutions to the impacts of climate change and are excited to see what we can achieve together.”
Dr. Cedric Robillot, Executive Director of the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program, continued, “The Great Barrier Reef is one of the largest ecosystems in the world – an area larger than Italy – and solutions to improve its ability to withstand climate change will not only require scientific breakthroughs but also a mindset shift towards industrial scale production, focusing on increasing capacity and reducing costs.”
“This partnership combines our reef biology and marine systems engineers’ expertise, with the problem-solvers behind one of the world’s most recognised engineering brands to streamline the production of corals and increase the scale of deployment on the Reef while raising global awareness of the threats they face.”
The Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program is supported by the Australian Government’s Reef Trust and the Great Barrier Reef Foundation, with collaboration from esteemed partners such as the Australian Institute of Marine Science, CSIRO, The University of Queensland, Queensland University of Technology, Southern Cross University, and James Cook University. This groundbreaking collaboration signifies a collective effort to safeguard and restore one of the world’s largest and most vital ecosystems in the face of climate change.
