Paradise lost: how marine science failed the world's coral reefs
Abstract
<jats:p>
The response of the coral reef scientific community to the present global
crisis in coral reefs is here compared with response times and response
patterns of scientists in two previous international environmental crises:
eutrophication of the Great Lakes and acid rain in the Northen Hemisphere. In
both these previous crises, less than a decade passed from first appreciation
of the problem to development of identification/evaluation/mitigation
frameworks that were useful in a policy context. Key elements were avoidance
of arguments over methods, genuinely multidisciplinary teams, and the presence
of respected, technically trained managers. By contrast, twenty years after
identification of the major stresses on reefs and description of the major
monitoring strategies, there is no process–response model in place, in
any country, equivalent to those produced in response to eutrophication of the
Great Lakes or acid rain. Reasons for this failure include, but are not
limited to: dominance by one field of science, biology; lack of competent
scientific managers; and emphasis on monitoring programmes, with no clear idea
how the results will be used.</jats:p>