Caribbean coral reefs under increasing threat, warns UN agency

From an article posted on the UN News Centre:

Warming temperatures and increasing storms are posing serious threats to Caribbean coral reefs and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) said today.

During the last 50 years many Caribbean reefs lost up to 80 per cent of their coral cover, according to the Paris-based agency, which noted that 2005 was especially disastrous for Caribbean corals.

Worldwide, nearly 500 million people depend on healthy coral reefs for sustenance, coastal protection, renewable resources, and tourism, with an estimated 30 million of the world’s poorest people depending entirely on the reefs for food.

Coral reefs are fragile ecosystems and current estimates suggest that nearly two thirds of the world’s coral reefs are under severe threat from the effects of economic development and climate change, such as coral bleaching, a direct result of global warming.

The agency’s warning came ahead of next week’s launch of “The Status of Caribbean Coral Reefs after Bleaching and Hurricanes in 2005,” by Clive Wilkinson, Director of UNESCO’s Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, a report assessing the damage caused to the reefs by high temperatures and numerous storms of three years ago in the wider Caribbean, home to over 10 per cent of world’s reefs.