19 2019 ANNUAL REPORT GLOBAL CHALLENGES PROGRAM
CHALLENGE AREA
Sustaining Coastal & Marine Zones Climate change, protecting coastal and marine habitats and resource security. This year a number of reports have highlighted threats to our coastal and marine zones as a result of climate change and plastic pollution. We all must recognise that the coming decade has to be the defining decade where we take urgent action to address this climate crisis. Challenge Leader
SENIOR PROFESSOR SHARON ROBINSON
In September the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) published a special report on ‘The Oceans and Cryosphere in a Changing Climate’. The report showed that communities living close to the coast (Goal 11), including much of Australia and our Pacific neighbors on small islands, are particularly exposed to ocean and cryosphere change, including sea level rise, extreme sea levels and loss of ice. The report confirms that human induced climate change is melting glaciers and ice sheets at an accelerating rate, with global mean sea level rising at more than double the rate seen through most of the last century, at 3.5 millimeters per year. The Climate Council’s report ‘This is what climate change looks like’ showed that we are already seeing the effects of climate change around Australia’s coasts; including the first record of a mammalian extinction (the native rodent Bramble Cay melomys).
We have also seen mangrove deaths in the Gulf, coral bleaching, and seagrass bed and kelp forest losses (Goal 14), as well as dieback of sub-Antarctic island and Antarctic coastal plant communities (Goal 15). Many of our current projects, including Blue Futures, Blue Carbon, Mapping the Islands and ECOAntarctica are working towards solutions to overcome the challenges posed by the changes to our environment that are occurring as a result of climate change. As 2019 ends with NSW coastal communities bathed in bushfire smoke, due to drought and climate extremes, we all must recognise that the coming decade has to be the defining decade where we take urgent action to address this climate crisis (Goal 13). We also need to appreciate that these are global challenges that require researchers from all disciplines to work together to find solutions for a sustainable planet. In 2019 we are excited to welcome Diana King and Georgia Watson to the team as SCMZ Research Officers.
