Diminishing coral reefs to cost billions by expected damages of flooding and storms

LOS ANGELES: The rapid loss of coral reefs around the world would double the annual expected damages of flooding, and triple the price from frequent storms, a study has found. The world coupled with its sea level rise, flooding could quadruple, according to the  researchers at the University of California, Santa Cruz in the United States. The study, was published in the journal Nature Communications.

Coral reefs serve as a natural, submerged breakwaters that reduce flooding by breaking waves and reducing the wave energy. The study compared that the flooding which occurs now with the flooding that would occur on the coastlines with coral reefs if the one metre of living coral reef were not lost. 

Without the living coral reefs, the annual expected damages from flooding would double, increasing by $4 billion. The costs from frequent storms would triple, researchers said. If coupled with sea level rise, flooding could quadruple. For the big 100-year storms, flood damages could increase by 91 per cent to $272 billion, they said.

"We built the best global coastal flooding model, and then we added reefs to estimate flood risk overall and the benefits provided by these habitats. This represents the first global application of a coastal protection model that probabilistically estimates risk and the benefits of coastal ecosystems," said Losada.

The countries with the most to gain from reef conservation and restoration are Indonesia, 
Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and Cuba. As annual expected flood savings exceed $400 million for each of these nations, researchers said.

The US also receives many benefits from coral reefs, with almost $100 million annually in direct flood reduction benefits, they said.

In addition to helping alleviate costs related to flooding, coral reefs also offer other economic benefits from tourism and fisheries.
The study found that reefs provide the most  benefits to small island states, including the Cayman Islands, Belize, Grenada, Cuba, Bahamas, Jamaica, and the Philippines.

In just the past few years, tropical storms such as Hurricanes Irma and Maria and Typhoon Haiyan have had devastating effects, and the effects of such storms would be even worse without coral reefs, researchers said.

Reef habitats across the world have been significantly diminishing and growing threats are faced from coastal development, sand and coral mining, destructive and excessive fishing, storms, and climate-related bleaching events, they said.