Some people believe that “bad news” messages turn an audience off. No one wants to hear depressing stuff. But sometimes, I think, we need to do just that – put the facts out there because things are so serious that we can’t bury our heads in the sand anymore.

That was my reaction when I read about a new biodiversity funding body called ORRAA – the Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (yes, I’m banging the resilience drum again!!).

In their “Guidelines for Applicants” for a new round of funding, they set out the challenges facing the ocean. I’m not sure whether it was deliberate, but when I read through it, I could almost feel a hammer blow with each data point:

• The impacts of changes happening to the ocean will include more intense storms, sea-level rise, acidification, deoxygenation, and ocean warming.

• By 2050, 800 million people will be at risk of coastal flooding and storm surges, and over 570 low-lying coastal cities will face a sea level rise of at least 0.5 metres.

• Coastal floods and storm surges currently cost the world between US$10 billion and US$40 billion a year. Floods will cost coastal cities US$1 trillion a year by 2050, with billions of dollars worth of infrastructure at risk.

That’s the bad news.

Now for the good news:

• Healthy reefs reduce incoming wave energy by up to 97%, reducing the annual expected damage from storms by more than US$4 billion.

• Mangrove forests sequester five to ten times more carbon than terrestrial forests, and provide more than US$80 billion per year in avoided losses from coastal flooding.

• The UN estimates that investing just $US6 billion a year in nature-based disaster risk management measures like restoring coastal ecosystems would save the world US$360 billion over the next 15 years.

• The IPCC’s 2022 AR6 Report on Impact, Adaptation, and Vulnerability is unequivocal. It states that climate change is happening now with cascading and compounding effects.

It seems clear that protecting natural capital is an important part of climate adaptation and risk management.

How can we not do this?

The funding gap

Because…right now, the money is not available.

At the end of 2022, representatives from parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) adopted the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The Framework commits Parties to a number of biodiversity conservation targets to be achieved by 2030.

In order to meet these commitments, estimates suggest that the difference between what we currently spend on biodiversity conservation (see figure 1) and what we should be spending (see figure 2) is US$ 700 billion per year between now and 2030 (you can find plenty more detail on line, for example here, here and here).

This is known as the biodiversity financing gap: $700 billion a year between now and 2030.

Addressing climate change is going to need a huge increase in action across all sectors: governments, the private sector, and civil society. It also requires a significant increase in investment to mitigate the exposures and vulnerabilities of those on the front lines.

Some people might want to bury their heads in the sand, carry on making money, “business as usual,”…but research from the World Economic Forum shows that US$ 44 trillion of global GDP—around half—is highly or moderately dependent on nature.

Here’s just one small example: the worldwide loss of all pollinators (including bees, butterflies, moths and other insects) would lead to a drop in annual agricultural output of about US$ 217 billion.

Can we afford the “business as usual” approach?

How is this relevant to the work we do?

I often say that threats to coral reefs (and other marine ecosystems) fall into two categories: global and local.

The global threats are related to ocean warming and climate change. Local threats are much more immediate – pollution from sewage and other sources, physical impacts from tourists, land-use change, etc.

As a locally-based NGO there is nothing we can do about the global impacts; that’s a government to government thing. What we can do is minimise the local threats so that reefs are more resilient and have a greater chance of surviving the growing global threats.

Yes, we need global action, particularly on financing mechanisms; but we also need local action, to ensure reefs are as healthy as possible.

We ALL have a role to play in that.

And the recent extreme weather we have been experiencing should tell us all – we are running out of time.