International Coral Reef Initiative

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An informal partnership of governments, international organisations and non-governmental bodies formed in the mid-1990s to raise reef conservation on the international agenda, with no treaty basis and no enforcement power. Its instruments are the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, which compiles the periodic Status of Coral Reefs of the World reports, and its convening role: it is jointly with NOAA Coral Reef Watch the body that declares a global bleaching event, which is a statement of fact about satellite thermal stress rather than a decision anyone can take unilaterally. Its structure is worth noticing. Reefs cross jurisdictions and the bodies with the strongest measurement capacity are often not the ones with the most reef, so the international arrangement that emerged is a voluntary coalition around shared observation rather than a regulatory regime around shared obligation.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.