Chapter 43 - Tropical and Sub-Tropical Coral Reefs

Summary

Introduction

Many activities and businesses are judged on three criteria, the triple bottom line: economic evaluation; social responsibility; and environmental conservation. Coral reefs make major contributions towards “people, planet, profit”; they are economically beneficial to many countries, especially small island developing States (SIDS), in the provision of food, materials and income from tourism and fisheries; coastal and island societies are often largely or nearly completely dependent on adjacent coral reefs, with cultures developed around those reefs; and reefs contain the largest reservoirs of biodiversity in the world. Moreover, these reefs constitute a very special ecosystem, forming a link between humans on the land and the ocean around them.

Of the 193 Member States of the United Nations, 79 States (41 per cent) have coral reefs in their maritime zones, including a large number of SIDS. These reefs are estimated to cover 249,713 km2 (Burke et al., 2011a) to 284,300 km2 (Spalding et al., 2001), with an additional 600,000 km2 of sandy lagoons. Reefs and nearby seagrass and mangrove ecosystems are of major importance for 275 million people who depend on associated fisheries as their major source of animal protein (UNSG, 2011) and play a role in social stability, especially within a subsistence economy which is often declining in sustainability. Of these 79 States, more than 30 SIDS have coral reefs that provide the major source of food, coastal protection, and a limited amount of rock and sand; and valuable income from tourism; the continual provision of these ecosystem services is dependent on actions focused on sustaining and conserving healthy, productive coral reef ecosystems.

Coral reefs around the world have been in a state of continual decline over the past 100 years, and especially over the past 50 years. The Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, which has reported since 1998 in the “Status of Coral Reefs of the World” series assessed that approximately 19 per cent of the world's coral reefs were severely damaged with no immediate prospects of recovery, and 35 per cent of the remaining coral reefs were under imminent risk of degradation from direct human pressures (assessment by the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network; Wilkinson, 2008; with 372 contributing authors from 96 States and territories).