Corals are highly sensitive to heat and face growing threats from human-driven climate change. (AFP pic)YEREVAN: Nearly all of the world's shallow-water coral reefs face an "extremely high risk" of collapse by 2075 due to climate change, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) warned Thursday.

In the first global assessment of its kind, the world authority on threatened wildlife classified 96% of the planet's coral reef systems as "critically endangered" – its highest risk category.

Corals are heat sensitive and particularly vulnerable to human-driven climate change, which is warming the world's oceans and increasing the frequency and intensity of damaging bleaching events.

"The risk of coral reef collapse is escalating, but this must be a wake-up call rather than a cause for despair," said Mishal Gudka, scientific lead of the IUCN Red List of Coral Reef Ecosystems assessment.