Climate Change, Environment, Global, Global Geopolitics, Headlines, North America

ENVIRONMENT: Global Warming Killing Oceans’ Life Centres

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 6 2004 (IPS) - Roughly 70 percent of the world’s coral reefs are effectively destroyed or threatened with destruction, according to a major assessment released here Monday by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network.

That marks an increase of 11 percent over the last evaluation taken in 2000, according to the report, ‘Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 2004’, to which 240 scientists from 96 countries contributed.

But the news is not all bad. The network found that some reefs that were severely damaged by coral bleaching in 1998 have recovered better than expected.

Still, the report’s main author, Clive Wilkinson, warned that severe bleaching incidents, until now estimated to take place once in a thousand years, are likely to become more frequent in coming decades due to the impact of global warming, considered the greatest long-term threat to the survival of the world’s remaining reefs.

”The news is mixed for the world’s coral reefs”, said Wilkinson, who doubles as the network’s main co-ordinator. ”We’re happy to report that almost half of the reefs severely damaged by coral bleaching in 1998 are recovering, but other reefs are so badly damaged that they are unrecognisable as coral reefs”.

Most of the recovered reefs were found in the Indian Ocean, part of the Great Barrier Reef off the coast of Australia and in the western Pacific, especially in Palau. The report noted that Australia has just taken steps to protect one-third of the Great Barrier Reef and one-third of the Ningaloo Reef Marine Park, in part by placing them off-limits to fishing.


It also concluded that nearly two-thirds of the coral reefs in the Persian Gulf have been effectively destroyed, followed by 45 percent of reefs in South Asia and 38 percent of reefs in Southeast Asia. Caribbean reefs have also suffered.

Echoing another report, ‘Reefs at Risk’, which was released by the World Resources Institute (WRI) in September, the network study found that many reefs in the wider Caribbean area have lost as much as 80 percent of their corals, small crustacean animals whose shells build upon those of former corals to create the reefs.

While they occupy less than one-quarter of one percent of the Earth’s total marine environment, reefs are home to more than a quarter of all known marine fish species. The total number of life forms that are supported by coral reef ecosystems has been estimated at more than one million.

According to one estimate, reef habitats provide humans with living resources, such as fish, and services, such as tourism and protection for populated coastal areas from waves and storms, worth almost 400 billion U.S. dollars a year.

Despite their vast age – some living coral reefs are as old as 2.5 million years – very little was known about their true extent and condition until an initial survey of 108 countries was published by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre in 1988. The first global data depicting their location was published by the London-based agency only eight years ago.

As more has become known about them, concern about reefs’ vulnerability has grown sharply. A widely cited 1993 report, based mainly on anecdotal evidence and a small scientific sample, asserted that 10 percent of the world’s reefs were dead and that another 30 percent were likely to die by 2012.

A 1998 report by the WRI and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which included a significantly larger sample, found that almost 60 percent of the world’s reefs were under high or medium threat from human activity.

In addition to the 20 percent of reefs that have been effectively destroyed, according to the new report, 24 percent are under imminent risk of collapse, and a further 26 percent are under a longer-term threat of destruction.

While global warming, which most scientists believe is caused by the emission of ”greenhouse gases” – caused by the burning of fossil fuels, such as coal and oil – represents the greatest long-term threat to coral reefs, there are a number of other, more immediate threats, almost all linked to human activity, that have contributed to their deterioration and death.

Direct pressures include: over-fishing of fish and smaller organisms beyond sustainable yields and particularly damaging fishing practices, such as the use of dynamite and cyanide; the erosion of sediment from land into reef areas as a result of poor land use, dredging or deforestation; pollution resulting from the run-off of fertilizers, pesticides and sewage; and the development of coastal areas for residential, industrial or tourism use beyond sustainable limits.

These problems are compounded by larger demographic and political trends – including growing population along coastal areas, increasing poverty, the lack of expertise in reef management in many parts of the world and the lack of political will on the local, national and international levels to protect and conserve reefs, adds the report.

Global warming itself contributes heavily as temperatures in the Earth’s atmosphere increase those on the sea surface, resulting in the ”bleaching” of coral, actually the loss of a particular, temperature-sensitive alga that the coral feed on. In addition, increased concentrations of carbon dioxide – a direct result of burning fossil fuels – reduce the rates at which coral reef organisms calcify.

In addition, scientists believe that global warming also tends to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme weather conditions, such as hurricanes, that can inflict structural damage on reef formations.

While the greatest losses in coral reefs are found in the Persian Gulf and South and Southeast Asia, the least destruction has taken place in the Hawaiian Islands, the Polynesian Islands, Australia and Papua New Guinea, and the Red Sea. In these areas, a range from only one percent to six percent of the reefs is either dead or under imminent threat.

While about 12 percent of the eastern Caribbean reefs have died, 67 percent are considered under imminent threat. Similarly, some 16 percent of the reefs in the U.S. Caribbean are considered dead, but 56 percent are under imminent threat, according to the report.

The World Wildlife Fund (WWF), one of the network’s non-governmental sponsors, said action is urgently needed to slow the pace of global warming in order to preserve the reefs. It noted that a two-week U.N. meeting of the world’s governments on global warning began Monday in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

“Governments have the immense responsibility to act now and keep the world from warming any more than two degrees Celsius (3.8 degrees Fahrenheit) in order to limit the damage”, said Jennifer Morgan, director of WWF’s climate change programme. ”We know that going beyond that mark would wipe out coral reefs in many parts of the world”.

While the United States and Australia have sent delegations to the Buenos Aires conference, they are the only two industrialised nations to reject the Kyoto Protocol, a 1997 accord that requires rich countries to reduce their emissions of greenhouse gases to seven percent below their 1990 levels by the year 2012.

 
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