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Climate
World Ocean Conference – Manado, Indonesia
A WWF delegation is in Indonesia for the World Ocean Conference 2009, calling for action on climate change threats to the marine areas we’re working to protect.
Representatives from more than 121 countries are attending the meeting from May 11-15, including high-level government officials and leading marine and climate experts.
The Coral Triangle
If the world does not take effective action on climate change, coral reefs will disappear from the Coral Triangle by the end of the century, a WWF study released at the conference said. The Coral Triangle is the world’s richest marine environment and encompasses the coasts, reefs and seas of the six countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste.
The study finds that without climate change action, the ability of the region's coastal environments to feed people will decline by 80 percent, and the livelihoods of around 100 million people will have been lost or severely impacted.
The Coral Triangle and Climate Change: Ecosystems, People and Societies at Risk report considers over 300 published scientific studies and includes the work of over 20 experts in fields such as biology, economics and fisheries science to present two different possible futures this century for the world’s richest marine environment.
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WWF believes that effective global action on climate change and regional attention to problems of overfishing and pollution would prevent this catastrophe
The report also shows there is an opportunity to avoid a worst-case scenario in the region and instead build a resilient and robust Coral Triangle in which economic growth, food security and natural environments are maintained if significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions are backed up by international investment in strengthening the region’s natural environments.
© Brandon Cole
"World leaders must support Coral Triangle countries in their efforts to protect their most vulnerable communities from rising sea levels and loss of food and livelihoods by helping them to strengthen management of their marine resources and by forging a strong agreement on greenhouse gas reductions at the UN Climate Conference at Copenhagen in December this year," said WWF International Director General James Leape.
The Coral Triangle, just one per cent of the earth’s surface, includes 30 per cent of the world’s coral reefs, 76 per cent of its reef building coral species and more than 35 per cent of its coral reef fish species as well as vital spawning grounds for other economically important fish such as tuna. It sustains the lives of more than 100 million people.
Six Heads of State to Join Coral Triangle Summit
Immediately following the World Ocean Conference will be a Coral Triangle Initiative Summit, on May 15, 2009. This event will be attended by heads of the six nations home to the Coral Triangle: Indonesia, East Timor, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Solomon Islands. WWF International Director General Jim Leape will attend this event, as the Coral Triangle is a top WWF priority. The Summit is expected to produce regional action plans that can be implemented in each country member and provide important regional inputs to the international climate change negotiations to be held in Copenhagen in December 2009.
The Arctic
It is ironic that the two most dramatically different realms of the marine environment appear to be experiencing the most intense, rapid and negative impacts of global warming. These are the coral reef systems of the tropics and the ice dominated regions of the poles.
At the World Ocean Conference, WWF will be underlining the impacts that global climate change is now having and can be expected to have on the Arctic marine environment. WWF is urging world leaders at the WOC to support a new global climate deal when the Kyoto Protocol expires, that will sharply reduce emissions from fossil fuels, and include provisions that curb emissions form deforestation and forest degradation.
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