One third of the world’s coral reefs may be able to withstand the impacts of climate change by 2050, according to a study conducted by the conservation NGO Wildlife Conservation Society and researchers from Macquarie University in Australia. The findings of the study, yet to be peer-reviewed, were presented on June 16 during the Our Ocean Conference held in Mombasa, Kenya. “This study proves that there is hope,” Joseph Maina, an associate professor at Macquarie University who contributed to the study, told Mongabay during a phone interview. For the study, Maina and colleagues combined more than 45,000 field observations of coral reefs from 1960-2025, with 42 different environmental and human-pressure factors, such as temperature, heat stress, cyclones, fishing pressure and connectivity. They used this data to train an artificial intelligence model to predict the future of coral reefs by 2050, in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions stay high. The results were striking. The program mapped 552,969 square kilometers (213,503 square miles) of coral reef extent. Of this, one-third, or approximately 165,922 km2 (64,063 mi2) of the reefs could be climate-resilient; that is, they could maintain healthy coral communities in the face of climate change impacts. These coral reefs are spread across 71 countries, but more than a half occur in five countries: The Bahamas, Cuba, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines. According to Maina, some African countries such as Kenya, Mozambique and Tanzania also host a significant proportion of reefs that appear resilient to climate change. However, Maina said that…This article was originally published on Mongabay