The ongoing loss of coral reefs in the northern South China Sea is the result of a complex interplay of global and local factors. An international long-term study, published in Nature Communications, shows that whilst climate change sets the overarching stress framework, local activities such as overfishing, nutrient inputs from agriculture or aquaculture, and coastal urbanisation act as accelerators of reef degradation. Tim Jennerjahn from the Leibniz Centre for Tropical Marine Research (ZMT) contributed to the study.