A new analysis found the flood protection benefits of coral reefs save the global economy $4 billion dollars a year.

一项新研究发现珊瑚礁可以进行洪水防护，每年能让政府节省40亿美元的开支。

播音/撰文 克里斯多佛•因塔利亚塔（Christopher Intagliata）

翻译 许楠

审校 张艺箫

Coral reefs are already appreciated for their beauty. But they provide another, more tangible benefit, too.

"Every day waves are coming ashore. And of course during storms you might have 20-foot waves. The reef is breaking those waves, essentially dissipating that energy before they hit the shoreline."

Mike Beck, a marine scientist for the Nature Conservancy and U.C. Santa Cruz.

"If we're to lose just a little bit of our reef—I mean we modeled just losing the topmost meter of reef—storm costs would double."

珊瑚礁有着美丽的盛誉，同时它还有另一个更加实际的作用。

“每天都会有海浪拍打到海岸上，当然，在风暴来临的时候你可能会看到二十英尺高的海浪。然而珊瑚礁可以分散这些海浪，在海浪击打到岸边之前分散掉它的力量。”

迈克·贝克（Mike Beck）是自然资源管理委员会和加利福尼亚大学圣克鲁斯分校的海洋学家。

他说“如果我们仅仅失去一少部分珊瑚礁，我的意思是，仅仅失去最表层部分的珊瑚礁——风暴造成的损失便会加倍。”

Beck and his team used 30 years of wind and wave data, combined with hydrodynamic, ecological and economic models, to figure out what future floods would look like, with shorter reefs. "And you repeat that, all around the world, for all 72,000 kilometers of coral reef coastline."

Overall, they found that the flood protection benefits of coral reefs save the global economy $4 billion dollars a year. Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Mexico, and Cuba are the biggest beneficiaries. The details are in the journal Nature Communications. [Michael W. Beck et al., The global flood protection savings provided by coral reefs]

"National economies only account for what you take from ecosystems. That is, what you harvest every year gets included in your GDP—not the benefit of keeping it there." By pinning a number on the flood protection benefits of coral reefs, Beck says he hopes government economists will see corals as more than just a draw for snorkelers.

贝克和他的团队利用了近三十年的风浪数据，结合流体力学、生态学和经济学模型，来计算珊瑚礁变矮后的洪水会是什么样的。“并且对全世界总共72,000公里的海岸线的珊瑚礁进行重复计算。”

结果他们发现，珊瑚礁每年可为全球的洪水防护节约总共40亿美元的开支。印度尼西亚、菲律宾、马来西亚、墨西哥和古巴是其中最大的受益者。具体研究被发表在《自然通讯》（journal Nature Communications）[Michael W. Beck et al., The global flood protection savings provided by coral reefs]杂志上。

“国家经济只报告了我们从生态系统中获得了什么，也就是说，只有我们的劳动成果被计算在了GDP中，而被保护的资产却没有。”通过确定珊瑚礁洪水防护的作用，贝克说，他希望政府的经济学家可以看到它们除了吸引潜水者以外更大的作用。