For many people around the world, coral reefs convey the images of vacations; clean coral sands with coconut palms, warm blue waters, and swimming or scuba diving over rich biodiversity of colourful corals and fishes. But there are other images for 500 million people around the world who depend on coral reefs for their livelihoods; and the futures for these peoples are being threatened by rapid degradation of their coral reefs. Reefs provide these people with food, income, shoreline protection and the basis for many cultures.

The Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO has been actively involved in documenting the status of coral reefs through management of the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network since 1996. The last report released in 2000 documented that 11% of the world's coral reefs had been damaged beyond recognition through the direct human stresses of excessive sedimentation flowing onto the reefs from poor agricultural practices and deforestation, pollution from sewage and agricultural wastes, and over-fishing particularly through damaging practices like using dynamite and cyanide to catch the few remaining fish on stressed reefs.

		Coral reefs are places of great beauty and wealth.

That report also stated that another 16% of the coral reefs of the world were severely damaged during the major climate related El Nino and La Nina events of 1997-98 when over-warm waters resulted in coral bleaching and death. The report went on to predict that unless we implemented urgent conservation measures, a further 14% of the reefs will be lost within the next 10 years and about 18% more in 20 years beyond that. That means that about 59% of the world's 284,300 sq km of coral reefs could be lost in 2 human generations.

There are however some positive indications. The International Coral Reef Initiative was formed in 1995 to help conserve coral reefs with many governments, UN and other international agencies and many major NGOs signing on to assist in reef conservation. They are addressing the problems on two different fronts: tackling the sedimentation, pollution and over-fishing issues by working with communities at the local scale and empowering them to manage their own resources; and raising the alarm that global climate change with associated warming of the surface waters and sea level rise is adding markedly to the local scale problems.