World Summit Thoughts

[Stephen C Jameson]

Dear Greg and Phil,

Regarding Mike Risk's thoughts.
>
>"We need to understand that coral reef management begins at the top of
>the mountain, and flows down to the sea through the villages and
>churches and mosques." (Sound track, "People of the Reefs.")
>
>If we push our ecosystem, we are no better than all the other special
>pleaders. My suggestion is, we push for water resource programs, because
>it's a Good Thing. And then we ensure that reefs are under those
>umbrellas.

1. I would even expand the umbrella further to say that "coral reef
management begins in the atmosphere and flows down from there".  We have
little understanding of the synergistic forces exerted on coral reefs
from pollutants/stressors entering via the atmosphere.
Just a few quick familiar examples:

-  African dust: herbicides, pesticides, bacteria, viruses, fungi,
nutrients, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, carcinogens (dioxin and radioactive
isotopes), and heavy metals.

-  Advective and atmospheric depositions (i.e., CO2, nutrients): could be
greater than land-based anthropogenic loadings.

-  Global climate change factors: increased temperature and UV light.

2. In addition to the watershed concerns that Mike summarized, we should
not forget the overfishing factor - which is also a global problem.

Bottom line:

Coral reefs are a sensitive system at the end of the human pollution
pipeline.

As such, they assess synergistic and addditive relationships among
pollutants and serve as an important life support alarm system for the
human species.

The alarm has started to ring - louder in some places than others.

Our understanding of how much more we can degrade our environment is
feeble.

Precautionary environmental policies need to be implemented on global,
regional and local scales.

************

I hope some of this is useful!  Best of luck and keep us posted!

Best regards,

Dr. Stephen C. Jameson, President
Coral Seas Inc. - Integrated Coastal Zone Management
4254 Hungry Run Road, The Plains, VA  20198-1715  USA
Office:  703-754-8690, Fax:  703-754-9139
Email:  sjameson at coralseas.com
Web Site:  www.coralseas.com

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