Word: reefs
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...long term." That's a minority view. Another Luanda-based observer says a change of course would require a change of government, but Angola's President Jos Eduardo dos Santos has not held an election since 1992. The observer describes the state as a ship heading for the reef of authoritarianism, corruption and popular discontent--a pattern seen in other oil-rich nations like Nigeria. Africa's oil wealth is all the more important now that China is investing huge sums of money. In Mauritius, the Chinese government is building a $500 million business park. Angola, China's leading supplier...
Apart from the kangaroo, the koala and other enchanting marsupials, Australia seems short of identity icons. There is, of course, Ayers Rock, the most sublime stone on earth. There is also the incomparable Great Barrier Reef, a single coral organism some 1,250 miles long. We have two famous structures, both in Sydney: the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, the latter a masterpiece by the Danish architect Jorn Utzon. Perched on one of the world's most beautiful sites for a ceremonial building, a headland in Sydney Harbor, and surrounded on three sides by sapphire water, this great building...
...environment. Significant concerns remain over the cost of implementing such a large project. “There is a question of scale, if what we’re trying to do is protect a bay then it is likely feasible, but as you start moving up to the Barrier Reef and ocean, the amounts of mass handling is enormous,” said Ken Caldeira, a global ecology researcher at Stanford...
...That's why he founded Reef Check. Realizing that one man's chore might be another's hobby, Hodgson decided to fill the information gap by enlisting people who would be naturally interested in saving coral: scuba divers. In 1997 he created a global network of volunteer snorkelers and divers, specially trained by scientists to monitor reefs using a standardized checklist. Over the past 10 years, Reef Check's volunteers have amassed a bounty of data on the world's coral. "In the beginning, people were looking down on us, saying 'Oh, you guys are just volunteers,'" Hodgson recalls...
...coral reefs so important? They constitute a vast, global ecosystem of species of plants and fish that people depend on for food as well as tourist revenue; in some areas, healthy reefs help protect the shore from potentially destructive waves. But arguments about biodiversity don't excite people, so Hodgson, who's trying to get coral on the World Conservation Union's threatened-species Red List, likes to point out that several anticancer drugs are derived from reef species. "Maybe one day a coral will save your life," Hodgson tells skeptics. "That gets to people...