ENVIRONMENT: Battle To Save the Planet’s Coral Reefs

By Moyiga Nduru Reprint | | Print |

Moyiga Nduru

LONDON, May 25 1997 (IPS) - The planet’s 600,000 square kilometres of coral reefs, largely hidden beneath the surface of the seas and scattered through the world’s tropical and sub tropical seas, are being destroyed at a frightening pace, according to a new report by an international environmental group based here.

The group, known as Planet 21, has published in its May issue of the ‘People and the Planet’ magazine a 35-page report as a contribution to The International Year of the Reef which has been called to try and stem the destruction of coral resources.

In the report, coral reef expert, Clive Wilkinson, warns that 70 percent of the living corals will be lost within 40 years if nothing is done to manage and preserve them.

And an American marine biologist, Robert Johannes, says: “We’ve got environmental murder going on — and no one is doing anything about it.”

And, according to the report, in just one area, around the Philippines, over 6,000 divers squirt some 150,000 kilogrammes of dissolved poison onto some 33 million coral heads each year.

That these catch of coral fish for the dinner tables of Hong Kong and Taiwan is worth nearly a million dollars, not to mention the huge trade in decoratives fishes for aquariums of the world.

“This fish, it seems, can expel the poison from their systems once stunned and caught, but the bountiful cities of coral, teeming with life that is even richer in its diversity than the rainforests of the land, are left bleached and dead,” says John Rawley of the Planet 21.

Coral reefs are the biological wonders, among the largest and oldest living communities of plants and animals on earth, having evolved between 200 and 450 million years ago, according to experts.

Today, according to the experts say, most established coral reefs are between 5,000 and 10,000 years old; many of them forming thin veneers over older, much thicker reef structures.

The report points out that the war on coral is waged not just with poison, but with dynamite, fine mesh nets, smothering sediment from a million building sites, the sewage and waste from from coastal towns and tourist hotels, polluting industries and upstream logging and farming, the dredging of trawlers and the dumping from oily bilges, the anchors of dive boats and the smashing of coral for building.

The problem is compounded by the fact that growing numbers of poor subsistance fishermen feel they have little choice other than to pillage their children’s future by illegal fishing methods after years of over-exploitation of the fisheries and intense, unregulated competition from greedy twawler fleets.

But, writting in the ‘People and the Planet’ magazine, coral reefs expert Don Hinrichsen says there are now many examples of local action, in the Philippines amd elsewhere, to defend coral resources and bring the reefs back to production life.

In Belize, for example, coastal management plans are building on the successful experience of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef Marine Park which covers an area of more than 350,000 square kilometres — larger than the United Kingdom. In Sri Lanka, Planet 21 reports that coral mining for limestone has been largely halted by local environmentalists, and in the Tanga region of East Africa dynamite fishing communities has been almost entirely silenced by the joint efforts of local activists and the World Conservation Union (IUCN).

Coral mining, which has occured in parts of Sri Lanka for over 400 years, has been a major problem for the island’s national coast management agency since its inception in 1978.

Coral is the principal source of lime for Sri Lanka’s construction industry, supplying approximately 90 percent of the lime used.

To stem the global pillage, the World Bank has joined in the effort to save the ‘the rain forests of the sea’ with projects worth around 250 million dollars in Jordan, Egypt, the Seychelles, Indonesia, Madagascar and Thailand.

The Bank, in partnership with UN Development Project (UNDP) and UN Environmental Programme (UNEP), is also completing a strategic action programme for the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden with Global Environment Facility (GEF) support.

“In celebration of 1997 as the International Year of the Reef, the World Bank plans to co-sponsor an associated event at its annual Environmental Sustainable Development Conference, highlightening the importance of coral reefs and urging immediate action to halt their degradation and to conserve these unique ecosystems — essential to sustaining life and livelihoods around the world,” says Marea Hatziolos, a Coastal and Marine Resources Specialist at the World Bank.