Nearly all coral reefs risk collapse in 50 years: IUCN

Nearly all of the world’s shallow-water coral reefs face an “extremely high risk” of collapse by 2075 because of climate change, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned Thursday.

In the first global assessment of its kind, the global authority on threatened wildlife classified 96 percent of the planet’s coral reef systems as “critically endangered” — its highest risk category.