Dying tropical coral reefs puts 250 million at risk - United Nations

More than 250 million people risk losing their livelihoods because of dying tropical coral reefs in what a senior UN environmental economist said was part of a double environmental crisis facing the world.

"We forget that there are two emissions problems. The one that everyone is aware of and is doing something about is climate change," said Pavan Sukhdev of the UN Environment Programme on the sidelines of the world's largest climate talks.

"The second emissions problem is the emergency around coral reefs," he said.

"More than 250 million people are at risk seriously of their lifeblood going away because of the lack of fish on tropical coral reefs," he said.

Warming seas are causing corals to bleach, scientists say. Normally corals recover from bleaching episodes, but now reefs are dying, destroying fisheries, because oceans are absorbing growing amounts of CO2 and becoming increasingly acidic.

Dr Sukhdev said millions of people in the Caribbean, Indonesia and elsewhere in Asia dependent on fishing risk being forced to move away from the coast - in addition to people uprooted from coastal areas by rising seas.

Former fishing families who have to move will need food, new livelihoods and housing, he said.

He pointed to a report backed by Prince Charles' Rainforest Project that said in October that financing of €15 to €25 billion between 2010 and 15 could lead to a 25 per cent reduction in annual deforestation.

The report said that if payments were made, based on a system that monitored results and helped build up the capacity of developing countries to fight deforestation, the loss of forests could be curbed by about three million hectares a year.

That could lead to an annual total emissions reduction of about seven billion metric tones of carbon-dioxide-equivalent, a sizeable slice of mankind's yearly greenhouse gas emissions.

The UN climate panel says deforestation is responsible for about a fifth of mankind's greenhouse gas emissions, though some recent studies say the figure is closer to around 12 per cent.

Mr Sukhdev said replanting forests in developing countries was a quick and cheap way to help soak up some of mankind's CO2 emissions. Trees soak up CO2 as they grow and are a major natural carbon "sink" along with oceans.

He said the suggested financing of €15 to €25 billion could lock away or prevent CO2 emissions at a cost of as little as a few euros a tone of carbon dioxide. A tiny sum, he said, compared with the trillions spent on economic rescue packages.