Howard Burton - Coral Reefs: Science and Survival: A Conversation with Charles Sheppard

A standard problem encountered by those who opt for a career in the mathematical sciences is the often significant disconnect between their work and everyday life. There is, undeniably, a gratifying level of eye-raising respect that you get when you tell people at a party that you spend your days grappling with scenarios of what the universe is doing in the first few microseconds after the Big Bang, but after the initial impression fades there is a certain lingering discomfort in being forced to admit that the doctors and engineers and entrepreneurs around you are engaged with the hustle and bustle of the real world in a way that you can only barely imagine.

Of course, such independence from the crooked timber of humanity has its definite advantages, and virtually everyone who has felt the pull of the hard sciences recognizes that its very remove from the human element is, in fact, a large part of the attraction. But still and all, there are times when every physicist or mathematician, usually after weeks of fruitless calculations and a drink or two, looks herself in the mirror and asks, Is this actually relevant to anyone? What difference does any of this really make, after all?

For environmental scientists, meanwhile, the problems typically lie in precisely the other direction. The issues at stake are overwhelmingly relevant to everyoneindeed at times existentially sobut finding a genuine solution isnt even half the battle. Sometimes it is much, much, less than that.

Charles Sheppard is a specialist on coral reefs, which are not only one of the most spectacularly diverse ecosystems on the planet, they are also the primary food and survival sources for millions of people around the globe. And they are dying. Fast.

If you think of all the reefs of the world, in rough proportions: about a quarter are dead; about a quarter are very badly damaged and at the present rate, are going to be dead in not too much time; a quarter are damaged a bit, but they would recover if theyre allowed to, and only a quarter are left alive.

Now, we turn to the dead and damaged three-quarters, and ask, What caused that? We can look and see what impacts theyve had. In many parts of the world, the impacts are very, very severe.

You might be tempted to concludeas I initially didthat identifying the root causes is a complex problem, or that any putative solution would be prohibitively expensive or impractical. But youd be dead wrong.

Essentially, we know what to do to maximize the productionthe surplus protein, if you likewhich you can take from a reef. We know that. We know how not to kill a coral reef. We know that. Its a matter of convincing authorities, what they call the decision-makers, important stakeholdersto use that horrible phraseto do something about it and to do what you say.

Time and time again, I said, You havent got this source of protein for these villages, thats why the villages have been evacuated, because youve killed them by X, Y, or Z.

And the minister of the government might say something like, Oh, no one told me that was important. Well, we have till the cows come home, but we cant get through enough. Theres this gap between informing the decision-maker, who might or might not be ruthless himself; he might be quite benign and have the best interest of his people at heart. But he hasnt had the information that people like myself have been shouting about for a long, long time.

Why? Well, Charles believes that many factors are responsible for our current state, from a lazy and often unresponsive media to short-sighted politicians to predatory multinationals who are indifferent to the long-term effects of any of their policies on a population that they will soon move away from.

As if that isnt bad enough, often those who should be aligned with progressive environmental policies can be just as obstreperous and counterproductive. The creation of the Chagos Marine Protected Area in the Indian Ocean, for example, is viewed by many as one of the few bright spots in the battle to preserve coral reefs. Established in 2010 within the British Indian Ocean Territory, it is one of the largest marine protected areas in the world. But there is also a joint UK/US military base in the region, which for some people necessarily damns the entire venture.

The opposition to the Chagos Marine Protected Area comes from a number of sources. Very often, some of the most vitriolic that I have facedbecause I was one of the people working in the background to help create ithas come from people who just hate the idea of the American military, or the Western military. So, in their view anything done there is going to be wrong to start with. Some people have told me that outright: Well, nothing you do is going to be right. And Im associated with a capitalist, imperialist machine.

Whats a dedicated, pragmatic, environmental scientist to do? Well, Charles believes that there are some genuine, positive steps that can be envisioned despite the slings and arrows on all sides.

My main goal would be to see a marine spatial planning system, which includes areas that have already been sacrificedcompletely covered with fish farms, saythrough to multi-use and right up to no take protected areas: the whole suite, rather like Western countries do with agriculture now. You have your national parks; you have an area which is a farm, with almost no diversity to speak of other than corn. And youll have some areas where you cant do anything. I think thats the type of solution weve got to translate from land to sea.

But even this, Charles realizes all too well, is far easier said than done in a world where all too often nobody has any clearly recognized jurisdiction over the ocean and most commercial activities are permitted unless it can be unequivocally demonstrated that they will cause harman almost impossible standard.

Ive been in many situations when Ive heard a company say, Well, theres no proof itll do harm, and I replied, Well, up the coast there, we know that a similar thing has done harm. And theyll just say, No, thats not proof its going to happen here.