Oceana a worldide organization that campaigns to protect and restore the world’s oceans is attending Copenhagen Summit (7-18 Dec 2009) to ask for a reduction of the effects of Ocean acidification. A new study of the vulnerability of individual nations to ocean acidification reveals that six of the ten biggest CO2 polluters are likely to suffer most form the impacts of ocean acidification by 2050...

   Each nation’s vulnerability to acidification is based on many factors, including its dependence on coral reefs, the size of its fishery, and its fish and shellfish consumption patterns. Nations at high latitudes are especially vulnerable, as acidification will tend to occur sooner in their waters. More than one-third of the world’s population lives in one of the 25 nations that will be most affected by ocean acidification. Moreover, among the most vulnerable are those with the highest GDP, including the United States, China, Japan, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Republic of Korea. These six nations alone were responsible for 51 percent of global CO2 emissions in 2007.

   Acidification jeopardizes the survival of coral reefs and numerous marine species, and with them, the sustenance for millions of people worldwide. The international marine preservation organization is asking governments to introduce the acidification problems in the COP15 debates. The COP15 is the UN Climate change Conference that will be held in Copenhagen between December 7th and 18th.
Oceans act like major drains for greenhouse gases. They reduce the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere and thus play a major role in attenuating climate change associated impacts. Nevertheless, this buffering effect has serious consequences for the oceans' ecosystems and biodiversity.

   "The oceans absorb greater quantities of CO2 than the tropical rain forests. In doing so, they slow down climate change, but they do it at the expense of jeopardizing the survival of millions of species", explains Xavier Pastor, Executive Director of Oceana Europe. "Therefore, we urgently need to reduce emissions from transportation, industry and power generation. We at Oceana are calling for a widespread change toward the use of renewable energies. We have set our sights on marine wind generators as long as they pass the environmental impact evaluations." Since the beginning of the industrial age, the oceans have absorbed 30% of the CO2 emissions and 80% of the heat generated by greenhouse gases.

   This fact, together with continuous and quick growth of CO2 emissions of human origin -mostly from burning fossil fuels- has begun to seriously alter oceanic chemistry.
The effects of this continuous absorption of CO2 translate mainly into a major decrease of marine pH; in other words, the water becomes increasingly more acidic. The acidity of the oceans' surface layer has increased by 30% since the pre-industrial era, thus bringing on acidification.
Acidification hinders, and in extreme cases completely prevents the formation of calcium carbonate structures by marine organisms such as crustaceans, mollusks and coral. These creatures need this component to form their shells and external skeletons. Many of these organisms are the base of food chains for thousands of species. Therefore, their disappearance is a big threat to both ecosystems and those populations that depend in some way on those ecosystems.

   In order to be able to halt the acidification process of our oceans, we must be able to reduce our emissions by 25-40%, in comparison with the 1990 levels, by the year 2020, and by 80-95% by 2050 as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Along these lines, at the meetings preceding the Climate Change Summit, the EU presented its proposal to reduce emissions by 2020 by 30% compared to 1990 levels, if the rest of the countries with obligations take steps in the same direction, and 80-95% by 2050.

ACIDIFCATION IN FIGURES

•    The oceans' acidity has increased by 30% with respect to pre-Industrial Revolution levels.

•    In the atmosphere, there are currently 385 parts of CO2 per million, already destructive and irreversible for different marine ecosystems and species. By 2030-2040 levels can be as high as 450 ppm, leading to a rapid decline worldwide of corals and other marine organisms.

•    To reduce risks to marine ecosystem it is necessary to cut down CO2 concentration to less than 350 ppm. This demands an emissions reduction of 80-90% well before 2050.

•    If CO2 emissions continue to increase at the current rate, the oceanic pH will drop to the lowest level in the last 20 million years, and there will be a massive coral extinction.

•    One fourth of the existing marine species, 9 million, depend on coral reefs for their reproduction or food.

•    In 2006, 2,900 million people got at least 15% of their animal protein intake from fish.

•    Coral reefs constitute a source of income, food and coastal protection for more than 500 million people in the world.