“Like a tropical rainforest, a coral reef system is a cradle of biodiversity. If we destroy the reefs, we destroy the ocean’s ability to reproduce.”

—Bruce Fouke, Geologist, University of Illinois, USA

Create World Heritage Site to Protect Coral Reef / New Caledonia

The planet's highest biological diversity is found in coral reefs, but these beautiful and productive ecosystems are shrinking fast. We've lost over 20 percent of the world's reefs in the last 20 years, and scientists warn that up to 70 percent may be destroyed by human activities in the next couple decades. Rising ocean temperatures are killing reefs throughout the tropics, and industrial pollution is causing deadly coral diseases.

One of the healthiest reef systems forms a protective ring around the South Pacific islands of New Caledonia. The world's largest continuous barrier reef, the New Caledonia reef is less susceptible to the bleaching epidemics found in more tropical waters. It encompasses close to 10 million acres (40,000 sq. km.), where researchers are continually discovering marine species previously unknown to science. The reef system is home to at least 15,000 species of marine animals, including some 800 species found nowhere else on the planet!

The islands of New Caledonia are home to some of the world's rarest and oldest plant species, thanks to their genetic isolation over millions of years. An estimated 80 percent of the islands' 3,000 plants are endemic (live nowhere else). Conservation International chose New Caledonia as one of 25 global “hotspots” in dire need of protection.

The threat to New Caledonia's biological diversity comes from its mineral wealth. The main island, Grande Terre, holds about a quarter of the world's known nickel reserves, used to produce stainless steel. Canadian mining giant INCO, infamous among indigenous communities in Canada, Guatemala and Indonesia (see box), wants to build two new nickel mines and a processing facility on the southern tip of Grande Terre.

INCO plans to use an experimental hydro-metallurgical process which uses large amounts of sulfuric acid whose vapors can produce acid rain, putting New Caledonia's forests at risk. Large quantities of waste water containing high levels of suspended and dissolved solids and heavy metals will be piped into the coral reef adjacent to an existing marine reserve. Hundreds of millions of tons of chemically altered solid wastes containing heavy metals will be dumped on land, but torrential rains will likely wash them into the nearby sea. The electrical energy to run the plant will come from coal, making New Caledonia the world's per capita leader in carbon dioxide emissions.

Kanak people erected a sacred totem pole at INCO’s mine site.

The Kanak indigenous people, who call their island Kanaky, are primarily subsistence fishermen and farmers who worry that the INCO mines will be “the destruction of a way of life,” as Kanak Regis Vandegou put it in a CBC radio interview. The Kanak Customary Senate (the legally recognized representative body) and the Rheebu Nuu monitoring committee (set up by the communities affected by INCO's project) are challenging INCO's 2002 environmental impact study. In late September, they will release the results of an independent review they commissioned, just in time to participate in an International Day of Protest against INCO on October 7. Kanak people also erected a traditional totem pole at one of INCO's construction sites, demarcating sacred territory where the Kanak will not permit trespassing.

The Kanak Customary Senate is leading an international effort to protect the coral reef by nominating it as a World Heritage Site. Since New Caledonia is still a French Overseas Community, France must submit the nomination to UNESCO (United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization). Last year, when Kanak chiefs delivered their proposal to Paris, French authorities did not submit it. The next opportunity for World Heritage site nominations comes in February 2004.

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