As coral reefs disappear at a record pace in Hawaii and abroad, scientists and leaders from across the globe will meet on Oahu later this week to discuss potential solutions at what’s billed as the largest coral reef symposium ever.

Experts gather somewhere new every four years for the International Coral Reef Symposium, a chance to share the latest research in their field. But this year’s symposium — the first to convene in Hawaii — will be different, organizers say. With warming seas and human activity putting a worrisome strain on the world’s coral reefs, policymakers and even world leaders will join the discussion to see how they might put knowledge into action.

“This is the first time we’ve really tried to make this quantum leap to move from science to policy,” Robert Richmond, director of the University of Hawaii at Manoa’s Kewalo Marine Laboratory, said in a recent interview. The event will take place Sunday to June 24 at the Hawai‘i Convention Center. Some 2,500 participants, including scientists, lawyers, three presidents and local kupuna (elders) from 97 nations, will participate in its workshops and talks, according to organizers.

“I never, ever would have expected in my worst nightmare to see what I saw as coral reefs back in the 1970s … to the state of coral reefs today,” said Richmond, the symposium’s convener. Since he started studying reefs as an undergraduate student 42 years ago, research has shown that 30 percent of the world’s coral reefs have died, with another 30 percent in the process of dying, Richmond said. Only about a quarter of what’s left is in the world is in “decent” shape, he added.

On recent dives around Jarvis Island, 1,400 miles southwest of Hawaii, federal scientists found that one of the world’s most lush marine reserves has been reduced to a coral graveyard, with more than 95 percent of the coral there dead.

Meanwhile, unusually warm waters have plunged Hawaii into “the most substantial bleaching we’ve seen in recorded history” over the past several years, in which some corals have recovered but many others have died, Richmond said.

The islands’ coral reefs also continue to face a “deadly combination” of overfishing, pollution and sediment runoff, he added.

In 2011, prior to the bleaching event, a federal government-commissioned study put the value of the main Hawaiian Islands’ coral reefs to tourism and other industries at nearly $34 billion.

Despite the dire situation, this year’s event will be “solutions-oriented” — highlighting examples in which communities have helped their reefs recover, Richmond said.

“We’re really hoping to make the biggest and most positive impact that we can,” he said.

Members of the Maui Nui Makai Network, a nonprofit consortium of six community groups across Maui, Lanai and Molokai working to protect local watersheds, will be among those featured at the symposium.

The network of grass-roots groups is only a few years old, but its members use traditional Hawaiian resource-management practices to better protect coral reefs and watersheds under heavy strain, said Jay Carpio, co-chairman of one of the network’s groups, Wailuku Community Managed Makai Area, with his wife, Maile.

“Our forage-fish decline has really impacted our fisheries. What we’re trying to do is improve water quality not just for human use, but for fish habitat, and that coincides with healthy coral reefs,” Carpio said Monday. “This is not a Hawaiian thing — this is a Hawaii thing. If we cannot do this for the generations that are not here, then we didn’t do what we’re supposed to do.”

The upcoming coral reef symposium offers the local, grass-roots groups an “unprecedented” chance to share and learn without having to pay prohibitive travel costs, added Emily Fielding, Maui marine program director for The Nature Conservancy, which helps supports the Maui Nui Makai Network.

The symposium will also feature new technologies to help diagnose coral diseases, Richmond said. It will give leaders from around the world, including Palau President Tommy Remengesau, a chance to tell scientists what kind of information they need to make the best decisions to manage their nations’ coral reefs, he added.

“I do believe this comes at a critical point in time … where the decisions we make over the next year, the next three years, the next five years are going to decide the trajectory for the future,” Richmond said. “We’re going to figure out whether coral reefs are going to continue to decline, whether we flatline and kind of hold steady, or whether we can actually turn things around.”

For more details on the symposium, visit sgmeet.com/icrs2016.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.