Coral reefs

As environmental destruction continues and the climate change and biodiversity crises accelerate, the concept of tipping points is being widely discussed. A tipping point is where a change in a system has gone so far that the system is destabilised, and positive feedbacks accelerate the decline towards total collapse, so that return to a desirable state becomes impossible in the reasonable future.

IEF member Austin Bowden-Kerby wrote from Tuvalu on 27 August about the extreme loss of corals in Tuvalu, an island nation in the mid-Pacific consisting entirely of atolls, rings of coral reefs and islets around a large lagoon, but no more than a few metres above sea level.