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Almost half of the world’s warm-water coral species face extinction due to Earth’s rapidly changing climate, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and its “Red List” of Threatened Species. The list, which has become one of the world’s most comprehensive sources of information on threatened species for more than 50 years, was released Wednesday during this month’s COP29, the United Nations’ climate conference in Baku, Azerbaijan.
In 2008, the IUCN assessed 892 warm-water coral species and determined approximately one-third were at risk of extinction. This week’s Red List now shows 44 percent of the world’s warm-water reef-building corals are threatened by increased warming as well as water pollution, hurricanes, and the severe impacts of coral diseases. And as these warnings from scientists and researchers tend to go, the best course of action presented by experts is cutting down greenhouse gas emissions. Beth Polidoro, who works for the IUCN and is an associate professor in the School of Mathematical and Natural Sciences at Arizona State University, said in a press release that doing so would slow Earth’s pace of warming and give many corals a window of opportunity to adapt and survive over the long term.
“As world leaders gather at the UN climate conference in Baku, this global coral assessment vividly illustrates the severe impacts of our rapidly changing climate on life on Earth and drives home the severity of the consequences,” says IUCN Director General Dr. Grethel Aguilar. “Healthy ecosystems like coral reefs are essential for human livelihoods — providing food, stabilizing coastlines, and storing carbon. The protection of our biodiversity is not only vital for our well being but crucial for our survival. Climate change remains the leading threat to reef-building corals and is devastating the natural systems we depend on. We must take bold, decisive action to cut greenhouse gas emissions if we are to secure a sustainable future for humanity.”
This latest Red List assessed warm-water corals, which are made up mostly by corals found throughout the Indian and Pacific Oceans. Cold-water corals, however, haven’t been assessed as extensively, according to the IUCN. Just 22 of the 4,000 cold-water corals have been assessed, they say, and their greatest threats are “fishing activity, especially bottom trawling, deep sea mining, drilling for oil and gas, or laying of deep-sea cables.”
