Golbuu was one of the speakers invited by the MOH to speak in front of different community members to shed light on the topic of climate change and its health impacts.
Golbuu’s talk focused on the three main climate impacts: increase in water temperature, acidification and sea level rise.
According to Golbuu, in the last 30 years, there’s an average increase of 0.5 degree Celsius in water temperature. When temperature becomes hot, changes occur in the water.
Increase in seawater temperature causes bleaching of corals, which leads to lower abundance and diversity of coral species. Increase in ocean acidification would lead to lower growth rate of corals as well as lower growth rate of clams.
Golbuu explained how coral reefs are affected with the increase in water temperature by showing pictures of the reefs during the 1998 bleaching event.
“Bleaching was widespread and variable. Offshore reefs were hit the hardest. Corals were affected down to 90 feet. And Corals near estuaries survived better than those farther from land,” Golbuu explained.
What people should understand, according to Golbuu, is that “We need to control what we can control. There are things that we can do locally.”
He added, management in Palau, as well as other places with coral reefs, should focus efforts and activities on human-induced changes that can affect the ability of coral reefs to recover, such as sedimentation and overfishing.
“At the same time, all efforts should be made by present and future leaders of the world to prevent further deterioration of global air quality, worsening the global climate situation,” Golbuu said.
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