IUCN: nearly all of the world's coral reefs face collapse within 50 years

The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) on October 22 published the first global assessment of coral reefs under its Red List of Ecosystems: 96 percent of ecoregions face an extremely high risk of collapse by 2075 and were rated critically endangered.

The assessment covered 127 ecoregions with 188,362 square kilometres of reef and involved more than 250 experts from over 80 countries. Even looking only at changes over the past 50 years, without future projections, 24 percent of ecoregions would already be critically endangered.

Warming and overfishing

Besides ocean warming, overfishing of species such as parrotfish and grouper threatens 63 percent of reef ecosystems. Western Galápagos reefs have already collapsed. A separate review of 892 reef-building coral species found 44 percent threatened with extinction.

"It is not too late to give coral reefs a chance to recover," said IUCN Director General Grethel Aguilar.