Spanning 2.3 million square miles, the Coral Triangle encompasses Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and East Timor and provides income, food security and coastal protection to over 100 million people who live around its edges. The Coral Triangle is the world’s epicenter of marine life abundance and diversity. It also supports the largest tuna fisheries in the world, which generate billions of dollars in global income every year.
The World Wildlife Fund warned in its report that if carbon emissions are not cut by between 25-40 percent by 2020, higher ocean temperatures could kill off vast marine ecosystems and half the fish in them. The report was presented at the recent World Ocean Conference in Manado, Indonesia, where a new six-country Coral Triangle Initiative was launched in an unprecedented effort to protect this undersea lifeline. The initiative is supported by the World Wildlife Fund, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy and is a 10-year regional plan of action that sets time-bound steps to address growing threats to the region’s coral reefs, fisheries, mangroves, threatened species and other marine and coastal living resources. So far, funds for the initiative total more than $300 million dollars, with the U.S. pledging $40 million dollars for Coral Triangle protective measures.
Indonesia has also separately launched a new protected marine park in the Coral Triangle the size of the Netherlands with a unique and varied ecosystem that is considered to be especially resilient to rising sea temperatures.
Ways individuals can get involved include giving to The Nature Conservancy’s Rescue the Reef program or by becoming a World Wildlife Fund Climate Witness and sharing first-hand stories about how environmental changes are impacting the Coral Triangle.
Hopefully our actions now will help preserve this precious resource which has been labeled the ocean's answer to the Amazon rain forest.
Source: BecauseAction.com
