Marine Conservation and Restoration

Tropical coral reefs provide local communities with livelihoods, food security, cultural significance, and coastal protection, making them one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on our planet. As global warming and extreme heat stress accelerate, coral bleaching events are becoming more frequent and severe, triggering the world’s Fourth Global Bleaching Event this past year. In the face of multiple pressures from climate change and human activities, urgent strategic decisions for coral reef conservation and restoration are necessary for the nearly one billion people who rely on these ecosystems and are on the frontlines of climate change. Here, I will share examples from the Wildlife Conservation Society’s (WCS) long-term conservation programs worldwide to protect climate refugia, and demonstrate how these efforts are scaling up to a global strategy that prioritizes the conservation, connectivity, and monitoring of climate-resilient coral reefs. Key insights include: fostering collaborations among governments, scientists, NGOs, local communities, philanthropies, and multilateral donors around a shared vision; connecting to international policy action through the Global Biodiversity Framework and the UNFCCC Convention on Climate Change; and building new technologies like MERMAID—a cloud-native, offline, free, and open-source coral reef data platform – to connect monitoring efforts around the world for rapid assessment of coral reef ecosystems and future forecasting of climate refugia.

Invited talk: Emily Darling Wildlife Conservation Society