Status of Coral Reefs of the World 2000

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
CLIVE WILKINSON
THE CHANGING AGENDA
A major conclusion in the ‘Status of Coral Reefs of the World: 1998’ report was of two
simultaneous, but contradictory, global phenomena occurring on coral reefs: there is an
increasing rate of degradation of many coral reefs due to direct human activities; while
there is greatly enhanced awareness by people everywhere about the problems facing
reefs and actions are being catalysed to conserve them.
The paradox continues and coral reefs continue to deteriorate in all areas where human
activities are concentrated, notably along the coast of eastern Africa, all of continental
South Asia, throughout Southeast and East Asia and across the wider Caribbean region. In
addition to the human activities and associated reef degradation observed over the past
four decades, an increase in sea surface temperatures associated with the major El Niño–La
Niña change in climate in 1997-98 resulted in extensive coral bleaching and mortality over
large parts of the Indian Ocean and Southeast and East Asia. On some reefs, there were
mortality levels greater than 90% leaving these reefs almost bare of corals and with early
indications of major shifts in the population structures of these reefs. The critical feature of
the 1998 bleaching events was that areas were struck indiscriminately, irrespective of the
status of reef health; impacts were equally severe on pristine, remote reefs as on reefs
already under major human stresses. It was also very disappointing for those people
managing reefs from human impacts to observe their reefs die from stress factors outside
their control. We are being forced to recognise that human reliance on burning fossil fuels
and clearing rainforests is leading to changes in global climate, and that events like the
extensive coral mortality in 1998 may occur more frequently and devastatingly in the future;
and not just to coral reefs.
It is pertinent to revisit the report of the UNEP-IOC-ASPEI-IUCN Global Task Team on the
Implications of Global Climate Change on Coral Reefs compiled by Clive Wilkinson and Bob
Buddemeier from the deliberations of a 15 person team of experts in 1994. The report
concluded that the major problems for coral reefs were direct anthropogenic stresses of
nutrient pollution, excessive sediments and over-exploitation acting at many local sites near
concentrations of people, and that global climate change was not yet an issue. To quote
“Our major finding is that human pressures pose a far greater immediate threat to coral reefs
than climate change, which may only threaten reefs in the distant future”; and “Climate
change by itself is unlikely to eliminate coral reefs …”. Yet within 4 years of that report, both
authors have become convinced that evidence points to global climate change posing an
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