Dans WLSAM
The reef is disappearing. Coral have started turning white and dying. (..) By now, the storyline should be familiar: We humans are burning loads of fossil fuels and chopping down the rainforest, and that’s causing the atmosphere to heat up rapidly. (..) This year, amid record heat, 93% of the Great Barrier Reef experienced bleaching, the term used to describe sick coral that eject the bright-colored algae that live on them. Bleached coral turn white, and while they’re not dead, they are suffocating. The colorful algae feed the coral with the oxygen and sugar they need to survive. With prolonged or repeated bleaching, coral begin to die, eventually turning to rubble or becoming smothered by plants. It doesn’t help that adding CO2 to the atmosphere and ocean also makes the waters more acidic, and worse still for the survival of coral. The consequences are truly stunning. Research indicates nearly all the world’s coral reefs could be lost by 2050. (..) Overfishing and pollution also threaten coral in Madagascar. But climate change — and the warming and ocean acidification that come with it — is expected to land the soundest blow. (..) A local nonprofit called Blue Ventures has been doing scuba surveys of reef health in this area. Their divers found 70% of reefs were bleached in April, at the peak of a heatwave, which is attributed partly to El Niño but also to the warming trend we’re causing by burning fossil fuels. Hary and the other fishermen know their catch is a fraction of what it once was. “We really suffer when we go a week without catching anything,” he says... this is an existential crisis. To be Vezo, according to some, you have to work on the water. This place — and its culture — could vanish with the reef. Their children cry from hunger, his wife, Lydia, tells me.
Dans ICTSD
No comments:
Post a Comment