Nairobi: Between 2009 and 2018, the continuous rise in sea temperature cost the world 14 percent of its coral reefs – that’s more than the size of Australia’s reefs combined – a UN-backed report revealed on Tuesday.
In the Sixth Status of Corals of the World: 2020 Report, experts from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, funded by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), collected data from more than 300 scientists from 73 countries, over a span of 40 years, including two million individual observations.
It revealed that almost invariably, sharp declines in coral cover, correspond with rapid increases in sea surface temperatures, indicating their vulnerability to temperature spikes, and found that this phenomenon is likely to increase as the planet continues to warm.
"Since 2009 we have lost more coral, worldwide, than all the living coral in Australia. We are running out of time: we can reverse losses, but we have to act now. At the upcoming climate change conference in Glasgow and biodiversity conference in Kunming, decision-makers have an opportunity to show leadership and save our reefs, but only if they are willing to take bold steps. We must not leave future generations to inherit a world without coral," Inger Andersen, Executive Director of UNEP, said in a press release on Tuesday.
The analysis which examined 10 coral reef-bearing regions around the world showed that coral bleaching events caused by elevated sea surface temperatures (SSTs) were the main driver of coral loss, including an acute event in 1998 that is estimated to have killed eight percent of the world’s corals, which, to put this in context, is more than all the coral that is currently living on reefs in the Caribbean or Red Sea and Gulf of Aden regions. The longer-term decline seen during the last decade coincided with persistent elevated SSTs.
The analysis investigates changes in the cover of both live hard coral and algae. Live hard coral cover is a scientifically based indicator of coral reef health, while increases in algae are a widely accepted signal of stress to reefs. Since 1978, when the first data used in the report were collected, there has been a 9 per cent decline in the amount of hard coral worldwide. Between 2010 and 2019, the amount of algae has increased by 20 per cent, corresponding with declines in hard coral cover. This progressive transition from coral to algae-dominated reef communities reduces the complex habitat that is essential to support high levels of biodiversity.
The report also highlighted that although during the last decade the interval between mass coral bleaching events has been insufficient to allow coral reefs to fully recover, some recovery was observed in 2019 with coral reefs regaining 2% of the coral cover. This indicates that coral reefs are still resilient and if pressures on these critical ecosystems ease, then they have the capacity to recover, potentially within a decade, to the healthy, flourishing reefs that were prevalent pre-1998.
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