Bangladesh Academy of Sciences

Ocean acidification, one of the world’s most important climate change challenges, may be left off the agenda at the United Nations Copenhagen conference, the world’s science academies warned today (Monday 1 June 2009).  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.  

The warning is made in a joint statement published by the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences and the academies of sixty nine other countries around the world through their membership of the InterAcademy Panel.  

Everybody knows that the increasing concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere leads to climate change.  But it has another environmental effect – ocean acidification – which hasn’t received much political attention.  Unless global CO2 emissions can be cut by at least 50% 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.

The statement calls for world leaders to explicitly recognise the direct threats posed by increasing atmospheric CO2 emissions to the oceans and its profound impact on the environment and society.  It emphasises that ocean acidification is irreversible and, on current emission trajectories, suggests that all coral reefs and polar ecosystems will be severely affected by 2050 or even earlier.    

The statement has been issued during the UNFCCC conference in Bonn this week (1-7 June) that will ultimately shape the December Copenhagen negotiations, where agreement must be reached on carbon emission reduction targets needed to avoid dangerous climate change.