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Reef Insurance | Earth Wise

January 4, 2023 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

Coral reefs around the world face multiple dangers from warming waters, acidification, human activity, and more. Powerful storms often cause tremendous damage to reefs. When possible, snorkelers and divers are deployed to try to repair damage to reefs. But philanthropy and government grants are basically the only resources available to fund such actions.

Three years ago, tourist businesses and the government in the Mexican state of Quintana Roo purchased an insurance policy to offset costs of protecting the local parts of the Mesoamerican Reef. The environmental group the MAR Fund later took out an insurance policy on the rest of the reef in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, and Honduras.

With this precedent, the Nature Conservancy recently purchased an insurance policy on behalf of the state of Hawaii to help offset repair work on its coral reefs. It is the first U.S. coral insurance contract.

Coral reefs are more than just hosts for marine life. They provide barriers against ocean storm surges, which is a major financial incentive for protecting them and hence an incentive to invest in insurance.

The new Hawaiian insurance policy has a premium of $110,000 a year and will provide $2 million in protection. Payouts occur when wind speeds go above 50 knots. No further proof of damage is required.

The Nature Conservancy has created teams called ‘Reef Brigades’ composed of snorkelers and divers who recover reef fragments, store them in ocean or shore-based nurseries, and then re-attach them when conditions are safe. It can be very expensive to do this sort of work, particularly when new corals grown in a nursery are required.

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Analysis: First U.S. coral insurance marks the rise of the reef brigades

Photo, posted September 14, 2011, courtesy of Greg McFall/NOAA Office of National Marine Sanctuaries via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio

Climate Change And The Next Pandemic | Earth Wise

May 26, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

As the planet continues to heat up, animals big and small are moving towards the poles to escape the heat. According to researchers, these animals are likely to come into contact with other animals that they normally wouldn’t, and are likely to relocate to regions with large human populations. These factors create opportunities for pathogens to get into new hosts, which dramatically increases the risk of a viral jump to humans. Climate change could lead to the next pandemic.

An international research team led by scientists at Georgetown University recently made this connection between climate change and viral transmission. In the study, which was recently published in the journal Nature, researchers conducted the first comprehensive assessment of how climate change will restructure the global mammalian virome. Their work focused on geographic range shifts.

As animals eccounter other animals for the first time, the study projects that they will share thousands of viruses. And as animals increasingly move into the same areas as humans, there will be greater opportunities for these viruses to jump to humans. The research team says that the impact on conservation and human health could be alarming as viruses jump between species at unprecedented rates.

In our warming world, much of this process may unfortunately already be underway. And efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions may not be enough to stop these events from unfolding.

According to the study, climate change will become the biggest upstream risk factor for disease emergence, eclipsing deforestation, industrial agriculture, and the wildlife trade. Pairing wildlife disease surveillance with real-time studies of environmental change may be part of the solution to predicting and preventing the next pandemic.

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Climate change could spark the next pandemic, new study finds

Coronavirus and Climate Change

Photo, posted October 16, 2014, courtesy of Shawn Thomas / NPS via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.

Climate Change And The Winter Olympics | Earth Wise

February 8, 2022 By EarthWise Leave a Comment

According to a new study led by researchers from the University of Waterloo in Canada, climate change will limit where the Winter Olympics can be held as winter changes across the Northern Hemisphere.

The international research team found that by the end of the century only one of the 21 cities that have previously hosted the Winter Olympics would be able to reliably provide fair and safe conditions for winter sports if global greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced.

However, if the emissions targets set forth in the Paris Climate Agreement can be reached, the number of climate-reliable host cities for the Winter Olympics would jump to eight.

In the study, which was recently published in the journal Current Issues in Tourism, the researchers reviewed historical climate data from the 1920s to today, as well as future climate change scenarios for the 2050s and 2080s. The researchers also surveyed international athletes and coaches, and found that 89% of them felt that changing weather patterns are already affecting competition conditions.

The average February daytime temperature of host cities has been steadily increasing. At the winter games held between the 1920s and 1950s, the average temperature was 32.7°F. It rose to 37.6°F at games between the 1960s and 1990s, and has spiked to 43.3°F in the games held in the twenty-first century. The planet is projected to warm another 3.6°F to 7.9°F this century depending on our ability to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Reducing global greenhouse gas emissions is critical to ensure that there remain places across the globe to host the Winter Olympics.

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Climate change threatens future Winter Olympics

Photo, posted February 21, 2010, courtesy of Michael via Flickr.

Earth Wise is a production of WAMC Northeast Public Radio.