In 2004, 20% of the world's coral reefs have been destroyed. Since human activity have become worse over the past years, think about how much of the world's coral reefs are destroyed now. There are many emerging threats that this biodiversity is facing and that includes, coastal development, over fishing, inland pollution, global climate change, and ocean acidification caused by some of excess carbon dioxide emissions being absorbed by the world's ocean. Humans have been over-fishing due to global marketing pressures. This damages the coral reefs because they use very damaging practices like bomb and cyanide fishing. Also for the development of coastal areas, humans need to mine coral reefs and sand but they go beyond their sustainable limits. We destroy something so beautiful to just fulfill our needs at the moment while we kill many species and a biodiversity we cannot take back. Almost 95% of Jamaica's coral reefs are dying or are dead.
The coral reefs benefit the environment and humans. We take advantage of what we have and one day we might not have them anymore. The coral reefs help protect shores from the impact of waves and from storms, provide benefits to humans in the form of food and medicine, and provide economic benefits to local communities from tourism. Because we keep polluting and destroy the coral reefs, we wouldn't be able to have those benefits. We cause the climate to change and it bleaches out the coral reefs. That is caused by elevated sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, exposure to extremely low tides, etc. And our government isn't doing anything about it.
The species that live in this biodiversity will soon lose all their homes and slowly die and become extinct. This would be because of us. In the end we lose too because we depend on the fish to survive. Without this biodiversity, it would impact our lives negatively because we impacted theirs negatively.
This article was very accurate. Anup shah was able to explain what the coral reef does for us and the environment and why it is so important then tell us why they are dying. Anup gives great example of human activities that impact the coral reefs and gives quotes by other people to support the facts and prove a point. It wasn't bias in any way and the illustrations helped show the problem with the coral reefs.
Source:
Shah, Anup. "Coral Reefs — Global Issues." Global Issues : Social, Political, Economic and Environmental Issues That Affect Us All — Global Issues. Web. <http://www.globalissues.org/article/173/coral-reefs>.
