Scientists call for urgent policy reform to accelerate cross-border coral restoration efforts
New paper published in Science by a team of international scientists urges regulatory reform to accelerate global coral restoration using assisted gene flow—an essential step to safeguard the economic value and coastal protection services that reefs provide.

By Annie Reisewitz and Diana Udel
07-24-2025

An international team of coral scientists is calling for urgent regulatory reform to support assisted gene flow (AGF)—a powerful tool to boost coral resilience—before climate change causes further reef decline and irreversible damage to coral ecosystems.

Writing in a policy forum in Science, the researchers outline the regulatory reforms needed to enable international exchange of coral broodstock with the goal of introducing new genetic diversity. These reforms include adapting existing rules for the exchange of non-commercial plant exchanges among herbariums and nurseries so that they can be applied to corals; establishing regional land-based coral biobanks as repositories for these shared corals; and leveraging political networks among overseas countries and territories to enable timely, cross-border coral exchanges. Regulatory reforms have become necessary because international efforts to curb carbon emissions have not yet been sufficient to reduce ocean warming.

“New approaches are needed to help save coral reefs from the threat of climate change and we need to adapt international regulations to help countries work together,” said Andrew Baker, the paper’s lead author and a professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science.

AGF is the managed movement of individuals (or their sperm or eggs) between populations within species ranges to facilitate interbreeding, usually with the goal of boosting genetic diversity and improving traits like resilience or disease resistance—especially in the face of climate change.

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