PARIS (AFP) – The world's top scientific academies on Monday
called on UN talks to include ocean acidification, a dangerous
byproduct of carbon pollution, in a global treaty to tackle
climate change.
"Ocean
acidification is expected to cause massive corrosion of our
coral reefs and dramatic changes in the
makeup of the biodiversity of our oceans and to have significant
implications for food production and the livelihoods of millions of
people," 70 academies of science said in a joint statement.
Their appeal came at the start of a 12-day round of negotiations
in Bonn under the banner of the UN Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC).
The UNFCCC is tasked with steering 192 parties towards a deal in
Copenhagen in December that will set down targets for curbing
greenhouse-gas emissions by the middle of the century.
"Everybody knows that the increasing concentration of
carbon dioxide in the atmosphere
leads to climate change," Martin Rees, president of Britain's Royal Society, said in a press release.
"But it has another environmental effect -- ocean acidification
-- which hasn't received much political attention," he said.
"Unless global CO2
emissions can be cut by at least 50 percent by 2050 and more
thereafter, we could confront an underwater catastrophe, with
irreversible changes in the makeup of our marine biodiversity.
"The effects will be seen worldwide, threatening food security, reducing coastal protection and damaging
the local economies that may be least able to tolerate it.
Copenhagen must address this very real and serious threat."
