The Coral Triangle is a geographical term referring to the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste with an abundance of coral reef. It is listed by World Wildlife Fund as one of the top priority for conservancy of marine life and the focus of its WWF Coral Triangle Program launched in 2007. The Coral Triangle has been identified as covering more than 1,600,000,000 acres (6,500,000 km2), with over 600 reef-building coral species which encompasses 75 percent of all species known in the world. More than 3,000 species of fish live in the Coral Triangle, including the largest fish - the whale shark, and the living fossil coelacanths. The Coral Triangle is a geographical term referring to the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste with an abundance of coral reef. It is the most diverse marine environment in the world - listed by WWF as the top priority for marine conservation and the focus of its WWF Coral Triangle Program launched in 2007. The Coral Triangle has been identified as covering more than 5.4 million square kilometers, with over 600 reef-building coral species which encompasses 75 percent of all species known in the world. More than 3,000 species of fish live in the Coral Triangle, including the largest fish - the whale shark, and the living fossil coelacanths.Coral reefs and other marine habitats within this region are severely threatened by human activities. Over 150 million people live within the Coral Triangle, of which an estimated 2.25 million are fishers that depend on marine resources for their livelihood. The most pervasive threats are overfishing, threatening 64% of Southeast Asia's reefs, and destructive fishing practices, threatening two-thirds of the reefs in the Philippines, Malaysia and Taiwan, and 50% of the reefs in Indonesia. Sedimentation and pollution associated with coastal development and changes in land use also put 37% of the regions reefs and marine habitats at risk.
Spanning eastern Indonesia, parts of Malaysia, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, Timor Leste and the Solomon Islands (see the map), the Coral Triangle is the global center of marine biodiversity and one of the world’s top priorities for marine conservation. This extraordinary expanse of ocean covers an area of 2.3 million square miles (5.7 million km2), the equivalent to half of the entire United States. It is home to over 600 reef-building coral species, or 75% of all species known to science, and more than 3,000 species of reef fish. Over 150 million people live within the Coral Triangle, of which an estimated 2.25 million fishers are dependant on marine resources for their livelihoods. Applying the latest science, The Nature Conservancy is working with a range of partners to protect the coastal and marine ecosystems of this vast area by addressing key threats, such as over-fishing, destructive fishing, and mass coral bleaching. Rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity in the vast region threaten to destroy reefs in Southeast Asia's Coral Triangle, a region labelled the ocean's answer to the Amazon rainforest, the WWF report said. Collapse of the reefs would send food production in the region plummeting by 80 percent and imperil the livelihoods of over 100 million people, forcing many to move from coastal villages to teeming cities, it warned. "If we don't do anything, then the reefs are going to be gone by the end of this century and the impact on food security and livelihoods will be very significant," Lida Pet Soede, WWF Coral Triangle Initiative Network head, said. "Some of the locations in the Coral Triangle are really important areas for all sorts of fish. The migration of tuna and turtles that spawn in the Coral Triangle are not going to have a next generation." Saving the Coral Triangle will require countries to commit to deep cuts in carbon gas emissions when they gather for global climate talks in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December to work out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol. bnCuts of 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 would be needed to avert the worst effects on the region, home to more than half the world's coral reefs and a lynchpin for ocean life in the region. Heat-trapping carbon gases - notably from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas - are blamed for warming Earth's atmosphere and driving changes to weather patterns.
The Coral Triangle is defined as the global epicenter of marine species diversity and is one of the top priorities for marine conservation. This magnificent region of the ocean covers an area of 5.7 million km2 and contains more than one-third of all the world's coral reefs. It harbors more than 600 species of reef-building coral, or 75% of all known coral species, and over 3,000 species of reef fish. It also holds nearly 75% of the world's mangrove species, over 45% of seagrass species, 58% of tropical marine mollusks, five species of sea turtles and at least 22 species of marine mammals also occur in the region - an astounding level of diversity concentrated in less than 1% of the world ocean's surface area. Moreover, large numbers of these species occur nowhere else, including 97 species of reef fishes endemic to Indonesia, and more than 50 in the Philippines. In broad geographical terms, the Coral Triangle includes portions of two biogeographic regions and encompasses East Timor, Indonesia, Malaysia (Sabah), Papua New Guinea, Philippines and Solomon Islands. Indonesia and the Philippines together hold a massive 77% of the regions' coral reefs. As well as the loss of one of the world's most diverse underwater ecosystems, the knock on effect would be the collapse of coastal economies that supports around 100 million people, according to the WWF- commissioned study outlined at the World Ocean Conference this week. The Coral Triangle includes 30 percent of the world's reefs, 76 percent of global reef building coral species and more than 35 percent of coral reef fish. However the authors of the study believe that effective global action on climate change and regional attention to problems of over-fishing and pollution would prevent catastrophe. The report presents two different possible futures for the world's richest marine environment -- the coasts, reefs and seas of the six countries of Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Timor Leste. "In one world scenario, we continue along our current climate trajectory and do little to protect coastal environments from the onslaught of local threats," said Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg of the University of Queensland in a press statement. "In this world, people see the biological treasures of the Coral Triangle destroyed over the course of the century by rapid increases in ocean temperature, acidity and sea level, while the resilience of coastal environments also deteriorates under faltering coastal management. Poverty increases, food security plummets, economies suffer, and coastal people migrate increasingly to urban areas."
