Days after Hurricanes Irma and Maria hit Puerto Rico in 2017, Ernesto Diaz assembled a team to study the impact of the Category 5 storms on his home. Diaz, then assistant secretary of the federal Department of Natural and Environmental Resources, toured coastal areas and saw roofs sticking out of floodwaters, exposed forests, and floating windows and doors. As a marine scientist familiar with coastline ecosystems, he also found it intriguing that communities near coral reefs suffered less damage.
This marked the beginning of a first-of-its-kind project, with the Federal Emergency Management Agency providing $38.6 million in aid to Puerto Rico in 2022 to shore up struggling coral reefs. This is the first time the agency will use its Hazard Reduction Assistance Grant Program, which spends hundreds of millions of dollars each year to help communities rebuild after disasters, for recovery funds. Diaz then moved to Tetra Tech, the contractor implementing the first phase of the effort. “I hope this will be a pilot project for how I believe we should protect coastal areas, infrastructure and beaches,” he said. “Everyone sees it. Everyone knows it’s our guardian.”
It is no exaggeration to say that coral reefs face an existential threat from climate change. If the average global temperature increases by 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), in one estimate Probably 70 to 90 percent of them will become extinct. In November, scientists said About 40 percent of coral species are already at risk of extinction due to ocean overheating, pollution, disease, and other abuses.
For decades, conservationists have been begging to protect these vibrant ecosystems and insisting that it’s the right thing to do. Coral reefs support about a quarter of all marine life, drive coastal economies, and provide food and livelihoods to a wide range of populations. Each year, public and private organizations provide approximately $300 million to protect coral reefs around the world, a fraction of the billions desperately needed by supporters. “For too long, we have relied on philanthropic funding,” said Emily Kelly, the World Economic Forum’s lead on blue carbon. “There’s not necessarily a business case for investing in coral reefs.”
Over the past decade, a small group of U.S. government and university scientists have compiled a series of studies that make just such a discussion about care. They showed in rigorously modeled, peer-reviewed research that coral reefs protect tens of thousands of people and billions of dollars worth of economic assets every year. They and others argue that if coral reefs are effectively high-performance sea walls, they should be maintained and strengthened with federal disaster funds that are tens to hundreds of times larger than conservation budgets. It’s starting to make a statement. Their calculations have already inspired pilot projects funded by FEMA, the Department of Defense, and insurance giants Swiss Re and Munich Re, each of which aims to protect corals for the sake of corals. If so, the logic goes, it’s better to protect it for ourselves. .
“The way we look at these ecosystems is in a way selfish. They protect people, so we need to maintain them,” says the coastal engineer and co-author of much of the related science. said Borja G. Leggero, a professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Such logic is persuasive to emergency officials and insurance companies who will ultimately “pay for Katrina and Sandy,” he added.
Reef Stars repairs blast-damaged coral in Indonesia in just 4 years
It is an understanding embedded in the customs of many indigenous peoples that coral reefs are not only majestic creations, but protect coastlines. In Polynesia, for example, communities form closer to shorelines buffered by coral reefs than to coasts that aren’t, says George, a physical oceanographer and Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment who has done extensive fieldwork in the field. said Professor James Hench.
Scientists have long understood this as a general principle. Corals are individually small polyps, but collectively they form wall-like structures with porous, complex surfaces. In the right location (near the coast or near the waterline), coral reefs increase the speed of waves and storms and dissipate their energy. The effects are sometimes dramatic enough even when viewed from land. Standing on the beach in San Juan, Diaz says it’s easy to spot the foam of white waves crashing 4,600 feet offshore.
But until now, no one had accurately quantified this benefit, much less at a level sufficient to change policy. About eight years ago, Kurt Storlazzi, a research geologist with the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), started talking with Mike Beck, a marine scientist then employed by the Nature Conservancy, about ways to change the situation. . They felt that the science available at the time was too general to attract the attention of governments or insurance companies. To win their support, Storlazzi said, he would need to show in excruciating detail how corals protect “money and lives.”
To accomplish that, Beck and Storlazzi assembled a team of scientists from inside and outside government. They set aside the many valuable properties of America’s 1,900 miles of coral reefs and set out to build a model from scratch that quantified just their performance as flood protection. This includes simulating the wave physics for every 10 meters (approximately 33 feet) of reef shoreline under different storm scenarios and understanding who and what was on the shoreline overlooking it. To achieve this goal, we needed to thoroughly integrate our specialized fields. To strengthen their case, they relied on the same data and methodology used by the insurance and disaster management sector.
They found that the country’s coral reefs save approximately 18,000 people and $1.8 billion in economic assets from flooding each year. The results, published in a USGS paper in 2019 and in the journal Nature Sustainability in 2021, show that states with highly developed coastlines like Hawaii and Florida rely on this protection to save hundreds of millions of dollars. It also showed that it has asset value. In places like the Pacific Island territories, where vulnerable populations live in low-lying areas, coral reefs protect thousands of souls. But scientists say it took just 1 meter (about 3 feet) of the reef to expose everything. Their conclusion was that preserving the garden was a very wise use of money.
When they presented this to a federal agency, they were impressed by the simplicity of the message and the attention to detail in the space. “What our research tells us is that if I had a hotel, this reef protected these buildings and these people,” Storlazzi said. “Congress votes on dollars and lives. The way we phrased it accurately in terms of money and lives really resonated.”
Amy Tensing/Getty Images
In the aftermath of Maria, this body of research helped Diaz persuade policymakers to take action. In 2020, the Commonwealth became the first U.S. jurisdiction to declare coral reefs “essential infrastructure.” Diaz spearheaded a FEMA application arguing that the islands’ coral reefs deserve restoration like any other infrastructure to reduce the risk of damage. The award will restore approximately 5,000 feet of coral reef around San Juan. Coral decline in these areas is contributing to “ongoing coastal flooding and erosion,” according to FEMA.
Since then, Hawaii, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands and, in November, the Mariana Islands have issued similar declarations, saying they would seek federal funding for coral reef restoration. FEMA is also thinking from a broader perspective. In a statement to Grist, it listed three other programs that can provide funding for coral reef protection and restoration. All of this is based on the Hazard Reduction Assistance Grant Program, which typically spends between $2 billion and $4 billion annually. Puerto Rico is the only project to receive funding so far, but experts say other applications are in the works.
The Department of Defense is also paying attention. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) effort To invent a sea wall that combines corals and oysters with artificial structures. The Department of Defense says there are approximately 1,700 coastal facilities at risk from extreme weather events, shoreline erosion, and rising sea levels, and traditional “gray” infrastructure is increasingly inadequate to the task of protecting them. states.
This emerging science is of interest to the insurance industry. According to insurance company AXA, the industry has paid out $300 billion in coastal storm losses over the past decade. Some industry players believe healthy coral reefs can lead to cost savings. In 2019, reinsurance giant Swiss Re and The Nature Conservancy developed insurance coverage for the Mesoamerican Reef area along Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula. Policies sold to local governments stipulated that insurers would pay claims if wind speeds exceeded 100 knots (115 mph) within a specific geographic area. The 2020 storm passed through there, causing an expense of $850,000. This allowed first responders to come out immediately after the storm and transplant thousands of coral fragments onto the reef, increasing the reef’s chances of recovery.
Duke University’s Hench warns that as coastal defense technology advances, coral reefs remain immature compared to traditional countermeasures. Structures made of concrete or rock have the advantage of having known quantities. Engineers, like FEMA, know how to design them and what they promise to clients. Coral reefs are complex organisms, and flaws in design can lead to unintended consequences. “Suppose you do a major restoration, and then four years later there’s a massive bleaching event that kills a lot of people,” Hench said. “The results are different from traditional engineering thinking. I think we’re still in the very early stages of how to do that cost-effectively.”
Storlazzi agrees that the next step is to collect reef performance data and judge it holistically against the same metrics used for seawalls, for example. He said the path forward will become clearer once data on the current pilot project becomes available.
The scientists behind all this research don’t seem to think it’s directly threatened by any upcoming changes in the White House. President-elect Donald Trump denies that climate change is caused by human activity and says his conservative blueprint for governance, Project 2025, should “dismantle and downsize” the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. , suggesting that FEMA should curtail post-disaster activities. of the state. But Beck points out that extreme weather can’t be helped. Take hurricanes Helen and Milton, for example, where early estimates suggest that each traded The damage caused was $50 billion (including Trump’s home state of Florida).
The group expects that demand for cost-effective solutions to protect people and property will persist across party lines in this context. When Florida Governor Ron DeSantis was recently boosted Storlazzi said the modeling he and his colleagues created was a key driver in raising funds for coral reef restoration. “We’re just trying to save dollars and lives and do it at a lower cost,” he said.
