As this blog is developed for a Conservation Psychology course, psychological concepts will be weaved in the explanations and causes of coral death throughout the blog. The following theories are principal to understanding  the causes for the decline of coral reefs.

A very important and principal idea should be introduced, that is: The tragedy of the commons. This theory, proposed by Hardin (1968), argues that rational users of a commonly shared resource will seek to maximize their individual gain on the resource since the benefit is always greater than the cost, as each demand’s cost is shared by other users. Each user will reach this conclusion and ignore the costs to others while seeking to increase his gain-which then causes destruction of the resource.

Coral reefs, due to its open access in nature, can be viewed as a commonly shared resource, or Common Pools of Resource (CPR) as it is difficult to exclude users who benefit and the exploitation of one user will reduce the resource for others. Because people have open access to corals, this has contributed to the anthropocentric threats: such as over-fishing, pollution and scuba diving, which are localized threats.

Hmm… Let’s backtrack a bit.

Scuba-diving? Wouldn’t scuba diving be contributing to the conservation of  coral reefs? Afterall, when one thinks of scuba-diving, one would usually associate it to ecotourism, which generates funds for more conservation programmes? (Or at least I thought that way.) It is indeed surprising that scuba-diving does pose a threat. To read more, do head on over to the Challenges!

And to continue on the track of the tragedy of the common pool of resources, because everyone gains from using coral reefs,  and coral reefs are open access to all, except those that are protected, the continual over-exploitation proves to be detrimental to these creatures. And when coral reefs are destroyed, the ecosystem is tipped to imbalance.

The rest of this section will deal with the local threats and global threats. Human pressures on the reefs can be grouped into local or global -Local threats are threats that occur near reefs from human activities and have a direct, localized impact, and global threats affect reefss indirectly, through human impacts on global climate and the ocean. These pages will explain more in detail the kind of threats that coral reefs faces, as well as the reasons for the global decline.