Coral Reef Collapse
Repeated mass bleaching is dismantling the most biodiverse marine ecosystem.
Severity score
51.4
Severe · default weighting
Trajectory
Worsening
What this is
Consecutive global bleaching events have hit reefs faster than they can recover. Reefs support a quarter of marine species and protect coastlines from storm surge for hundreds of millions of people. Most projections show near-total loss of tropical reefs within decades on current warming trajectories.
Score breakdown
Loss of life
8Direct and attributable mortality, normalised across annual and cumulative tolls.
Lives negatively impacted
64People displaced, injured, food-insecure, exposed or otherwise materially harmed.
Financial cost
50Direct damage, lost output and health-system spend attributable to the event.
Environmental impact
96Emissions, habitat and biodiversity loss, contamination and irreversibility.
Trajectory
86Whether the situation is escalating, and how much worse it is plausibly getting.