Lucy Williamson, BBC News 12 May 09;
The world's most important coral region is in danger of being wiped out by the end of this century unless fast action is taken, says a new report.
The international conservation group WWF warns that 40% of reefs in the Coral Triangle have already been lost.
The area is shared between Indonesia and five other south-east Asian nations and is thought to contain 75% of the world's coral species.
It is likened to the Amazon rainforest in terms of its biodiversity.
Temperature change
It's 2099, and across south-east Asia, a hundred million people are on the march, looking for food.
The fish they once relied on is gone. Communities are breaking down; economies destroyed.
That is what we can expect, says the new WWF report, if the world's richest coral reef is destroyed.
And that, it says, could happen this century.
It's billed as a worst-case scenario, but the report's chief author, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, says it is not as bad as the future we're currently headed towards.
"Up until now we haven't realized how quickly this system is changing," says Professtor Hoegh-Guldberg.
"In the last 40 years in the Coral Triangle, we've lost 40% of coral reefs and mangroves - and that's probably an underestimate. We've fundamentally changed the way the planet works in terms of currents and this is only with a 0.7 degree change in terms of temperature.
"What's going to happen when we exceed two or four or six?"
Climate change consequences
Avoiding a worst-case scenario would need significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions and better controls on fishing and coastal areas, says the report.
The Coral Triangle covers 1% of the earth's surface but contains a third of all the world's coral, and three-quarters of its coral reef species.
If it goes, an entire eco-system goes with it - and that, says Prof Hoegh-Gudberg, has serious consequences for its ability to tackle climate change.
"Pollution, the inappropriate use of coastal areas, these are destroying the productivity of ocean which is plummeting right now. That is the system that traps CO2 - 40% of CO2 goes into the ocean.
"Now if we interrupt that, the problems on planet earth become even greater," says Prof Hoegh-Gudberg.
Indonesia is hosting the World Ocean Conference this week because, it says, oceans have been neglected so far in global discussions on climate change.
It wants the issue to have a bigger profile at UN climate talks later this year.
Climate change endangers coral Triangle: WWF
Aubrey Belford Yahoo News 13 May 09;
MANADO, Indonesia (AFP) – Climate change could wipe out an ocean wilderness said to be the world's most diverse by the end of the century if nations do not drastically cut emissions, the environmental group WWF said.
Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity in the vast region threaten to destroy reefs in Southeast Asia's Coral Triangle, a region labelled the ocean's answer to the Amazon rainforest, the WWF report said.
Collapse of the reefs would send food production in the region plummeting by 80 percent and imperil the livelihoods of over 100 million people, forcing many to move from coastal villages to teeming cities, it warned.
"If we don't do anything, then the reefs are going to be gone by the end of this century and the impact on food security and livelihoods will be very significant," WWF Coral Triangle Initiative Network head Lida Pet Soede told AFP.
"Some of the locations in the Coral Triangle are really important areas for all sorts of fish. The migration of tuna and turtles that spawn in the Coral Triangle are not going to have a next generation."
Saving the Coral Triangle will require countries to commit to deep cuts in carbon gas emissions when they gather for global climate talks in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December to work out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol.
Cuts of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 would be needed to avert the worst effects on the region, home to more than half the world's coral reefs and a lynchpin for ocean life in the region.
Heat-trapping carbon gases -- notably from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas -- are blamed for warming Earth's atmosphere and driving changes to weather patterns.
Local communities and governments will also have to curb over-fishing and pollution, the WWF report said.
"If you continue down the path of the over-exploitation of resources, even if you get an incredible reduction in emissions there will still be a threat," WWF climate campaigner Richard Leck said.
The report comes as ministers and officials from over 70 countries meet in the Indonesian city of Manado for the World Ocean Conference, the first global meeting on the relationship between oceans and climate change.
Nations at the conference hope to pass a joint declaration aimed at influencing the direction of the Copenhagen talks in December.
A concurrent meeting will also see leaders from the six Coral Triangle nations -- Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, East Timor, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea -- pass a joint plan on conserving the region.
WWF campaigner Leck said any agreement to save the Coral Triangle would help limit damage to the region, which despite gloomy forecasts would likely be among the reef regions slowest to be ravaged by climate change.
"The Coral Triangle is potentially more resilient than other coral areas around the world and what is amazing is the level of political commitment we are seeing this week," he said.
Coral Triangle at risk from climate change - WWF
Sunanda Creagh, Reuters 12 May 09;
JAKARTA, May 13 (Reuters) - Southeast Asia's biologically diverse coral reefs will disappear by the end of this century, wiping out coastal economies and sparking civil unrest if climate change isn't addressed, conservation group WWF said on Wednesday.
The Coral Triangle, a reef network that spans Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor, has more than 76 percent of the world's reef-building coral species and 35 percent of its coral reef fish species.
However, a new report commissioned by the WWF warned that much of this reef is doomed unless developed countries cut carbon emissions to 40 percent below the 1990 levels by the year 2020 and developing economies cut emissions by at least 30 percent from their current levels.
The report, based on 300 published studies and released to coincide with the World Ocean Conference in Manado, Sulawesi, warns that a do-nothing scenario will lead to a steady rise in sea temperatures, killing the coral and its dependent wildlife and hurting the livelihoods of around 100 million people.
"Unless there is some sort of miracle, it will mean aggregated poverty and when you couple it with the inundation of coastlines, you will get to the point where whole societies are destabilised," said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, the report's author and a marine expert at the University of Queensland.
The resulting food shortages and desperation could fuel radicalism and drive up illegal immigration, said Hoegh-Guldberg.
"Australia is going to have millions of people knocking on its doors," he said, adding that the loss of the reefs would gut both formal and informal fishing industries.
"The contribution of registered fisheries alone ranges from 2 to 12 percent of GDP of this region."
However, a senior official from the Indonesian Environment Ministry said a 30 percent emissions cut was unrealistic for developing nations.
"I am not sure it's possible. We can only achieve around a 17 percent cut by 2025," said Marwansyah Lobo Balia, assistant to Indonesia's environment minister.
"Of course there is a lot of coral bleaching but most of the damage we have found so far is not because of global warming but because of human activities such as pollution and fisheries that use bombs."
The WWF report also said that "the pathway that the world is on today exceeds the worst-case scenario described in this report".
"I know it sounds alarmist, but it really is alarming," said Hoegh-Guldberg.
WWF International Director General James Leape called for a strong agreement on greenhouse gas reductions at the UN Climate Conference at Copenhagen in December this year. (Editing by Sara Webb)
'Coral triangle' a global emergency
Gavin Fang, ABC News 13 May 09;
Australian scientists are warning of the possibility of a future wave of economic refugees from south-east Asia and the Pacific if one of the world's most important marine ecosystems is devastated by climate change.
The "coral triangle" is an ocean region about half the size of the United States to Australia's north that supports millions of people in coastal communities and is home to a diverse array of unique marine species.
But a report by the University of Queensland has found unchecked global warming could take a terrible toll.
The triangle's waters cover just 1 per cent of the earth's surface, yet many scientists regard the region as the Amazon of the Seas.
From Indonesia in the west to Solomon Islands in the east and the Philippines in the north, the marine environment is one of the most biologically diverse regions in the world.
More than three-quarters of the world's reef-building coral species and a third of the world's coral reef fish can be found within the waters.
But the new research shows global climate change is taking its toll.
The director of the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Queensland, Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, says countries must act now to stave off climate change.
"If we travel down that road and we don't take action against climate change to the level that we should, we see a world about 50 years from now in which coral reefs are a remnant of what they are today," he said.
"In fact they may be actually functionally extinct. We see mangrove systems that support fisheries gone and what we see is food security plummet."
It is the loss of food stocks that has scientists like Professor Hoegh-Guldberg most concerned.
More than 150 million people, many already poor, live on the shores of the coral triangle, relying on its bounty for food.
"By the end of the century under the worst case scenario we could see as much as 90 per cent of those food resources having eroded," he said.
"You start to see that you are now destabilising human communities through the fact that there is just not enough food. So where do they go? We'll almost invariably see an increased level of pressure on Australia and New Zealand to provide the sort of intake that needs to alleviate these problems."
The authors of the Climate Change and Coral Triangle report say there needs to be an 80 per cent cut in global carbon emissions by 2050 to save the marine ecosystem.
But even that will not prevent some of the worst effects already being wrought in the coral triangle by climate change.
With that in mind leaders from 70 countries, including Australia, are meeting in Indonesia this week for the World Ocean Conference.
They will be looking to find ways to better protect the world's oceans in the post-Kyoto, climate change agreement that will take effect after 2012.
That will be negotiated in Denmark in December.
A 25 per cent cut in global emissions by 2020 is the target many countries, including Australia, have now indicated they might sign up to.
But Professor Hoegh-Guldberg remains unconvinced.
"There is no doubt that cutting Australia's emissions by 25 per cent is going to be a challenging task but it's only going to be worth it if we get down to 20 per cent of emissions by 2050," he said.
"And that's I think where we've got to go. We've got to show real action that shows we are progressing to decarbonise our economy as quickly as possible.
"I think we've got to take this issue as a global emergency and we are not doing that."
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