Coral Islands and there Reefs. Economic and Ecological Significance.

C.R.Wilikinson (1996) concluded that coral reefs would fair more favourably to sea level rise than nearby coral islands, citing a lack of a growth mechanism, whilst a well-accepted depositional mechanism now exists allowing islands to grow, the fate of these related landforms and their inhabitants is now known to be strongly intertwined.

An article by Greg Ansley summarising Julian Cribb's book The Coming Famine: The Global Food Crisis and What We Can Do To Avoid It cites 'decimation of coral reefs' as a key factor as to the food crisis which human populations face, specifically those living on nearby coral reefs who depend on the food supplied by these landforms. Worst case scenarios by Wilkinson (1993) predict 70 per cent losses of coral reefs by 2030 through a range of anthropogenic impacts if mitigation efforts are not put into place. When this is put in the context Pernetta (1992) set of 'dependence' of this maritime resource for food and trade by atoll nations in the pacific then the question of whether the nations are 'doomed' or not due to sea level rise seems secondary to the threats posed by ecological and economic destruction of these nations resources.

http://reefrelief.org/ is an organisation dedicated to 'preserving and protecting living coral reef ecosystems'. http://reefrelief.org/threats-to-coral-reefs/ at this site details Wilkinson's (1993) wide range of threats anthropogenic activities pose to coral reefs, and therefore coral islands. A useful summary which also breaks down the threats into direct and indirect categories has been made by the Microdoc's Youtube Channel:

Unfortunately Pernetta (1992) concluded that these small coral island nations are 'ill equipped to handle existing environmental problem which will worsen as climate changes', this limited ability to tackle these problems could in the near term actually 'doom' these low lying coral island nations, forcing populations to flee, even if sea level rise itself does not.

References:

Wilikinson.C.R. 1996. Global change and coral reefs: impacts on reefs, economies and human cultures. Global Change Biology. 2, 547-558

Pernetta, J.C. 1992. Impacts of Climate Change and Sea -Level Rise on Small Islands States: National and International Responses.

Changing scientific opinions

Scientific discourse has markedly changed over the past 70 years, evolving away from a negative outlook on the future viability of coral reefs and coral islands. A well publicised, and often repeated quote is that of F.W. Goreau which was used in a briefing to UN climate delegates in 2007, he stated in 1948 that ' Coral reefs are NOT resilient, they are the most sensitive and fragile of ecosystems and we have already lost most of them'. On a more recent timescale there have been many predictions of coral island nations facing economic and humanitarian disasters; ultimately their populations becoming environmental refugees (Pernetta, 1992; Wilkinson, 1996; Mimura, 1999). Wilkinson summarised that some coral island nations could be 'render(ed) ... uninhabitable through contamination of groundwater and increased erosion'.

Emotive accounts support these predictions of submergence. The following video depicts the memories of a old man who states 'When i was a small boy this island was big, as i grew older the island got smaller', whilst this is a direct account of recent events of a the Carteret Islands its reliability is extremely questionable:

These emotive accounts which appose recent scientific investigations by Webb & Kench (2010) tied with prevailing scientific discourse have led to popular opinion becoming favourable towards coral islands being 'doomed', the following video summarises this popular opinion:

Most pessimistic predictions made for coral island nations also revolve around the idea that sea water intrusion is 'polluting' the fresh water lens found in the centre of most coral islands, these ideas stem from problems with rising salinity of the freshwater. However there are some more sceptical climate change blogs have taken a more practically based approach to this problem, namely 'omniclimate' which posted in late 2009; http://omniclimate.wordpress.com/2009/09/23/coral-atolls-and-sea-level-rise/. Showing that rising salinity was due to over use of a limited resource, rather than saline intrusion.