00:00And we stay in Turkey and welcome our correspondent Juno Suner who is in
00:03Antalya and will bring us new informations on how the 31st United Nations
00:07conference on climate change is unfolding. Let's see.
00:15So COP 31 is of course an international conference with
00:21participations of head of state, head of
00:25organizations who are here. There is also representatives of the civil society
00:29and also scientists are present here and a number of civil society organizations
00:35dedicated to protect the environment. One of them for instance now is my guest.
00:42That's Mariana from the International Coral Reef Society. You're from Brazil.
00:46Thank you very much for taking the time. I would like to ask you why is it important?
00:51Why are you here as a representative of the International Coral Reef Society?
00:57Thank you for the question. Hi everybody. So it's extremely important for us to be here.
01:02Like corals are one of the most complex and one of the most important ecosystems.
01:07Like about one million, one billion people rely on coral reefs for their livelihood.
01:12Corals like are important for fisheries, they're important for the economy. Many people travel
01:16to locations to snorkel, to see the reefs. So they also protect the coast. So corals are extremely
01:22important like for livelihood, not just for the biodiversity component. But corals are being affected
01:27by climate change. So if we continue the trajectories that we are right now, we might lose about 900%
01:33of
01:34the corals by the end of the century. So we are here as scientists like working on corals to advocate,
01:39to bring like awareness and to demand that we actually like cut our fossil fuel emissions,
01:47to actually like cut down, like yeah, decrease our temperatures. So the corals have a chance
01:51to persist beyond the end of the century. So you are a scientist then? You are not a politician,
01:58you are not a leader of an association, you are a scientist. Can you describe me? What is your research?
02:04What do you do exactly? So I said exactly this, like the interaction of like how corals are responding
02:09to climate change. So corals have interaction with a microscopic algae like that photosynthesizes just
02:16like any plant and provides the products of photosynthesis to the coral. But because of climate
02:21change, because of the increasing temperature, the corals are losing this interaction. They are losing,
02:26they're expelling this algae and then the corals become white. That's why we call coral bleaching for
02:30those that have heard about it. But when corals are bleached, they're not dead. They're extremely
02:35vulnerable. They are like extremely vulnerable. They can get diseases and they're basically fasting,
02:42right? Like they lost the main source of nutrients that was provided by the algae. But if the temperature
02:47of the water decreases, they can still recover the algae and recover and become healthy again. So I
02:52studied this interaction of the coral and the algae and how they're responding to climate change, how they're
02:57responding to the increasing temperature in the water. And my final question. So, and I guess my
03:03audience also would like to know, what is your expectation from this summit in respect to coral
03:09reefs? What do you, what kind of an outcome do you want to see here? So yeah, it's not just
03:14me that
03:14are here as a scientist. We have also the Ocean Pavilion. We have multiple scientists working on ocean with
03:20different topics from marine carbon removal, to corals, to components in the water, to oceanographers.
03:26We also have the next COP, the blue COP that's going to be the BB&J. So we have a
03:31lot of people
03:31interested in the waters beyond the national jurisdictions, like how that's going to be controlled.
03:36We're going to have the first COP in January. So we have multiple scientists working on anything related
03:42to ocean that are here at COP. And our expectation is to have the ocean, like more visible in the
03:48negotiations. So we have now the Brazilian presidency that just released the the roadmap yesterday,
03:55like the Mapa do Caminho. So it's the first time that actually like countries are committing to
03:59transitioning away from fossil fuels. And like we also have like last year, many times countries included
04:05the ocean in their NDCs, their national determined contributions. So we're here to bring awareness,
04:11like to hope that the ocean is going to be increased more in the negotiations. And oceans can be
04:16included in the adaptation and mitigation. So like ocean are not just important for those who care
04:24about biodiversity or for those who are researchers, but they can actually be included in the national
04:27determined contributions. So we're here like we want demand, we want the ocean to be more included
04:32in the negotiations. That's our expectation. So it's COP 31 is of course about headlines, about heads of state,
04:40governments, governments, all eyes are on them. But many eyes, many, many eyes and scientific eyes are
04:48directed here on nature. And that includes the seas, the oceans, the water and what's below. So we just heard
04:57about the expectations coming from Marianne, from Brazil and the expectations are high. And we will see
05:06how they will be answered by the political community here and how the work continues on creating sensitivity
05:13for the nature, its maritime parts and the ones below the surface.
05:21And after this report from Turkey, we have a short break coming up. Professor.
