Climatic change may destroy massive coral reefs

In a study commissioned by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) where more than 5,000 climatologists, ocean experts, government representatives and environmentalists from 80 nations have been discussing the effects of climate change on the world's oceans, came out with a disturbing fact that due to climatic changes, coral reefs would disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of this century. This would reduce the ability of coastal environments to feed people by 80 percent and result in the livelihoods of around 100 million people being lost or badly affected. The Coral Triangle, considered the world's richest marine environment, crosses the coasts, reefs and seas of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor. "In these conditions if we continued along our current climate trajectory and did little to protect coastal environments from the onslaught of local threats then the future is bleak," Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, who led the study, quoted in a statement released by WWF. In this scenario, people see the biological treasures of the Coral Triangle destroyed by the turn of the century by alarming rise in ocean temperature, acidity and sea level. Such a scenario can be prevented if global action on climate change is taken and the problems of pollution and over-fishing is dealt with an iron hand. The suggestion came from a study presented at the World Ocean Conference in the Indonesian coastal city of Manado. The WWF said the Coral Triangle included 30 percent of the world's coral reefs, 76 percent of its reef building coral species that sustained the lives of more than 100 million people.