Reefs Without Borders: Pacific and Global Action to Bring Reefs to COP31

Hosted by the Governments of Fiji, the Wildlife Conservation Society, The Nature Conservancy, WWF’s Coral Reef Rescue Initiative, the Global Environment Facility, the Global Fund for Coral Reefs, the High-Level Climate Champions, the Minderoo Foundation and the Ocean & Climate Platform, and supported by many global partners. Coral reefs cover less than 1% of the ocean floor, yet they support around a quarter of all marine species and underpin the food security, livelihoods, coastal protection and cultural identity of nearly a billion people. Yet coral reefs remain largely absent from the formal COP31 agenda, despite sitting squarely within the ocean-climate nexus the Presidency has named among its priority themes. Reef protection is climate adaptation, coastal resilience, food security and biodiversity policy at once. This event exists to change that trajectory before Antalya. Momentum is already building: the UNEA-7 resolution on coral reefs led by Fiji and Australia, the Coral Reef Breakthrough, the Climate-Resilient Coral Reefs Commitment, and tools such as the GCRMN Status of Coral Reefs of the World report and ICRI guidance on integrating reefs into national plans. The task now is to bring these efforts together. The session opens with a presentation of Fiji’s National Action Plan for Coral Reef Conservation, one of the first national reef plans anywhere to use climate-resilient reefs explicitly as a conservation strategy, and with an update on the Climate-Resilient Coral Reefs Commitment, now 23 signatories and more than 40 supporting organisations. A moderated panel brings together government, science, finance and community voices around a single question: how does the coral reef community arrive at COP31 as a connected implementation coalition rather than a set of parallel efforts?