An international team of environmental scientists have warned that the world’s coral reefs – the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ of climate change – may vanish in the coming 30 years.
Over 25% of all ocean life is found in coral reefs. They provide food, livelihoods, cultural heritage, and protection for 500 million people.
If the Paris Agreement is not implemented, forecasts indicate that coral reef ecosystems around the world will be functionally degraded by 2050.
Even with drastic emission reductions to ensure global warming is kept within 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, up to 90 per cent of the world’s corals could still vanish in the next three decades, leaving behind a reef structure that will lose many of its functions.
Drawing on expertise from universities and wildlife conservation groups from across the world, including the University of Leicester, the scientists published a series of significant recommendations to protect, conserve the world’s coral reefs.
“Coral reefs are the ‘canaries in the coal mine’ when it comes to sensing ecosystems under stress from ocean warming due to climate change. Corals can sense when ocean temperatures exceed a dangerous threshold and warn us when we need to take measures,” said Jens Zinke, Professor of Palaeobiology at Leicester.
“Our research has shown that coral reefs have been severely impacted by ocean warming in the past three to four decades, yet some reef locations show lower rates of warming or benefit from mitigating circumstances due to local oceanography.
“Some reefs have the ability to resist or recover from thermal stress faster than others, and these reefs may serve as sanctuaries under future warming. This is a major new research direction – to find those locations and protect them before they are gone,” Zinke said.
The white paper Forecasting Climate Sanctuaries: Securing the Future of Coral Reefs contains the most recent recommendations. These include expanding the 50 Reefs conservation portfolio to include coral resistance and recovery sanctuary.
They also call them sustainable financing initiatives to assist the implementation of regional portfolios; and catalysing large scale, data-driven coral reef monitoring efforts in order to test and develop new models as well as predictions of climate sanctuaries.
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