World's coral reefs face serious risk of degradation

by Rich Bowden - Jul 22 2008, 22:33

Many countries throughout the world that rely on coral reefs for fishing stocks and tourism are unable to protect them from climate change, a new study has found.

An international team led by Tim McClanahan from the Wildlife Conservation Society in Kenya, and Dr. Josh Cinner from the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, Australia, has found many countries' current conservation for coral reefs to be wholly inadequate to protect them from the expected ravages of global warming.

“Climate change is expected to increase the frequency and intensity of extreme climatic events, and will profoundly influence ecosystems and the communities that depend on them -- coral bleaching and category-5 cyclones are examples,” Dr. Cinner said in an ARC statement. “When the ocean warms it can play havoc, causing entire reefs to die or to take many years to recover.”    

The researchers say adaptation to the new climate is key, combined with a new approach to coral reef protection.

“Sustaining coral reefs, along with the goods and services they provide to the people who depend on them, it will require two things -- the ability to predict the risk of extreme climate effects, and the ability of the affected human societies to adapt and to change the way they protect and manage their marine environment.”

The team's study assessed 29 communities across 5 countries in the West Indian Ocean to see which reefs were more likely to suffer environmental degradation due to global warming and whether they were being adequately managed. The pair found the scale of the threat from climate change varied widely and, on the whole, found conservation strategies to be wanting.

“For example, Kenyan reefs are susceptible to bleaching, suggesting that they are unlikely to sustain a high-quality tourist experience. Yet Kenya has a moderately large marine protected area fisheries closure system that is highly dependent on tourism. The sustainability of this protection strategy under climate change scenarios is questionable,” the team observed.

“In Tanzania, some sites generally have higher adaptive capacity and lower environmental susceptibility, suggesting that investment in more protection could be effective. However, Tanzania currently lacks an effective system of large fisheries closures, protecting less than 2% of its reefs from fishing."

“Most sites in Mauritius and Madagascar have low environmental susceptibility and consequently are expected to fare better than reefs in the rest of the region - yet currently less than 1% of the reefs in these countries are protected,” they added.

In a radical suggestion, the researchers say in places where the damage is likely to be high, and where governments lack the ability to conserve the environment, it may be necessary to pass conservation responsibility on to local communities and industries who have more interest in preserving the reefs. However, the researchers say more work is needed to be done to provide coastal communities with alternative forms of livelihood.

“It is essential that where reefs are at high risk, development strategies do not make local communities or industries more dependent on reef-based resources,” they cautioned.

The study is published in the journal Conservation Letters.                       

Around the Web