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ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM
Dangerous Climate Change: Is it inevitable?
Friday, 9 May 2008

Stresses on coral reefs: Can they adapt?
by Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg

Ove Hoegh-Guldberg leads an active research group that is focused on the impacts of global warming and ocean acidification on coral reef ecosystems. He has produced over 120 peer-reviewed scientific articles, runs the blog www.climateshifts.com, is a reviewing editor at Science magazine and chairs the Coral Reefs and Climate Change working group within the Coral Reef Targeted Research Program for the World Bank. In 1999 he was awarded the Eureka Prize for scientific research into the mechanisms underpinning coral bleaching and climate change.

Coral reefs are among the most biologically diverse ecosystems, housing at least one million species, directly supporting over 100 million people, and industries worth billions of dollars each year. Over many millions of years, coral reefs have largely prospered in Earth’s warm, shallow seas. Recent evidence, however, indicates that coral reefs are in rapid decline due to a cocktail of local and global human stresses. The most significant factors affecting corals reefs are global warming and ocean acidification, which many conclude will lead to the functional collapse of coral reef ecosystems if allowed to continue unchecked. Crucial to whether this devastating outcome eventuates is whether corals and their dinoflagellate symbionts can adapt to climate change. Whilst it is true that corals and their symbionts have adapted to past change, most evidence indicates that these organisms are ill-equipped to adapt to the rapid rates of climate change that are and will occur over the coming decades and century of change. This conclusion (a single biological case among many others) clearly indicates that we are already violating the central tenet of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was to prevent ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with Earth's climate system’.