{"id":943031,"date":"2026-10-23T06:48:09","date_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:48:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943031\/"},"modified":"2026-10-23T06:48:09","modified_gmt":"2026-10-23T06:48:09","slug":"almost-all-shallow-water-coral-reefs-now-face-extinction-risk-study-warns-climate-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/943031\/","title":{"rendered":"Almost all shallow-water coral reefs now face extinction risk, study warns | Climate News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The world authority on threatened wildlife classified 96 percent of all coral reef systems as “critically endangered”.<\/p>\n

By AFP and The Associated Press<\/p>\n

Published On 22 Oct 202622 Oct 2026<\/p>\n

Almost all of the world\u2019s shallow-water coral reefs<\/a> face an extremely high risk of collapse in the next 50 years, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has warned in a new global assessment.<\/p>\n

In a report released on Thursday, the world authority on threatened wildlife classified 96 percent of the planet\u2019s coral reef systems as \u201ccritically endangered\u201d, its highest risk category, with total extinction possible by 2075.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe future threat of climate change is looming and severe, and that poses a very high risk to the survival of these ecosystems,\u201d said Mishal Gudka, scientific lead of the IUCN Red List of Coral Reef Ecosystems assessment.<\/p>\n

Corals are heat-sensitive and particularly vulnerable to human-driven climate change<\/a>, which is warming the world\u2019s oceans and increasing the frequency and intensity of damaging bleaching events.<\/p>\n

When a reef collapses, hard corals disappear and are replaced by algae, rubble and sponges. As a result, the reef no longer supports a diverse ecosystem that can include everything from tiny invertebrates to reef fish like grouper.<\/p>\n

The emergence this year of a \u201csuper\u201d El Nino, the natural warming phenomenon, also presents a risk to corals, Gudka said at a news conference at the UN\u2019s COP17 biodiversity summit in Yerevan, Armenia.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the latest dose of bad news for coral reefs, which are critical sources for seafood and tourism and often serve as buffers against coastal erosion and storms.<\/p>\n

Sometimes dubbed \u201crainforests of the sea\u201d, they have some of the world\u2019s richest biodiversity and support a quarter of marine species as well as coastal communities and businesses.<\/p>\n

Most of the world\u2019s famous reef systems \u2013 including the Great Barrier Reef in Australia<\/a>, the Coral Triangle in the Western Pacific Ocean and Southeast Asia, the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System and the Red Sea coral reefs \u2013 are critically endangered, according to the assessment.<\/p>\n

Elevated risk of extinction<\/p>\n

For its report, the IUCN used the \u201cmiddle-of-the-road\u201d scenario from the UN\u2019s panel of climate experts that projects global temperatures rising 2.7C above pre-industrial levels by 2100.<\/p>\n

Its analysis examined 127 tropical and subtropical coral systems covering 188,362 square kilometres.<\/p>\n

A week ago, another IUCN study in the journal Nature found that nearly 44 percent of reef-building coral species face an elevated risk of extinction due to climate change. A year ago, a survey found that harmful bleaching of the world\u2019s coral had grown to include 84 percent of the ocean\u2019s reefs, the most intense of its kind in recorded history.<\/p>\n

Despite its warning, the IUCN said coral reefs in most parts of the world \u201care not yet lost\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cCoral reefs have shown a remarkable ability to bounce back from devastating bleaching events,\u201d said Gudka. \u201cPockets of surviving, resilient coral reefs can still remain in the future, so we must do everything within our reach to set them up for success.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The world authority on threatened wildlife classified 96 percent of all coral reef systems as “critically endangered”. By…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[5684,18149,5806,6109,2840,209091,49,48,2848,5660,322826,295,3456,15113,6110,44,160250,66,4935,323],"class_list":["post-943031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-africa","tag-albania","tag-asia","tag-asia-pacific","tag-australia","tag-belize","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-climate","tag-climate-crisis","tag-cook-islands","tag-environment","tag-europe","tag-fiji","tag-indonesia","tag-news","tag-ngo","tag-science","tag-sustainability","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=943031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/943031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=943031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=943031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=943031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}