As delegates wrapped up the ninth International Coral Reef Symposium in Bali this week, environmental group Greenpeace picked the Pacific island of Kiribati to release a new coral reef study with an ominous warning. Green Island is a coral cay near Cairns. The report was written by Professor Ove Hoegh Guldberg, director of the University of Queensland's Centre for Marine Studies, and economists Hans Hoegh Guldberg, David Stout, Herman Cesar, and climate scientist Alex Timmermann. The authors predict the loss of coral reefs will devastate the region's fishing and tourism industries.
Coral reefs are important for several reasons.
Lying in shallow tropical seas, coral reefs protect coastlines from destructive storms and support some of the world's greatest biological diversity. They have been a rich source of food since the first humans and today continue to generate sustenance and revenue from fishing and tourism. Tourism income and resulting employment could drop by between 25 percent and 75 percent. Reef fisheries could drop in value from 25 percent to 50 percent and pelagic, or ocean travelling, fisheries by 10 percent to 25 percent. The most vulnerable Pacific nations are likely to be Tuvalu and Kiribati, followed by Cook Islands, Palau, Tonga, French Polynesia, Nauru, New Caledonia, then Vanuatu, Solomon Islands, Fiji and American and Western Samoa.