About the report
Ocean acidification and biodiversity loss: Connecting the dots with data is a report written by Economist Impact for Back to Blue, an initiative of Economist Impact and The Nippon Foundation. The purpose of this report is to highlight the need for ocean scientists to prove causal links between ocean acidification (OA) and damage to marine species, and the challenges involved in doing so.
Summary
The world is living through a biodiversity crisis. The rapid pace at which animal and plant species have declined in recent decades has led some experts to declare that another mass extinction is under way. What distinguishes this from previous periods of accelerated biodiversity loss are its causes. Whereas naturally occurring events—some sudden and cataclysmic, others more gradual—were the triggers in pre-historic times, human actions are the root cause of species decline today. They include over-hunting, over-fishing and over-farming, but potentially the most devastating in the long term is climate change brought about by our unrelenting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions.
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The impacts of emissions-induced climate change are readily evident in the world’s oceans, perhaps most vividly in the decline of warm water coral reefs caused by warming. Excess CO2 emissions—more than the oceans can safely absorb—are putting many other marine species under direct threat, such as several forms of plankton and shellfish. Those excess emissions also cause ocean acidification (OA), which changes seawater chemistry in ways that make it difficult for many organisms to survive or thrive.
Scientists understand the malign connection between OA and changes to ocean chemistry and biological processes. Many have highlighted the biodiversity loss that will result from OA, and the follow-on harm it will cause to marine ecosystems and the communities that rely on them for food and livelihoods. Policymakers and international organisations are generally aware of the threat that OA poses. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has mandated member countries to actively combat it, and many are putting action plans in place for that purpose. At national, regional and local levels, however, where action is most vital, competing priorities too often deprive those plans of resources and impetus.
Ocean experts advocating for action against OA worry that their efforts are not creating sufficient urgency among policymakers. OA’s effects are not easy to see, unlike other manifestations of climate change. Therefore, scientists are seeking to provide incontrovertible evidence by demonstrating causality between OA and species decline. Doing so will perform another service: making it easier to determine whether OA is or is not the major stressor on marine life in specific environments, reducing the chances that remedial actions are misdirected and cause unintended harm.
Proving causality cannot be done through laboratory research alone. It requires extensive data gathering in the field, where OA’s impact on organisms can be observed in real (not simulated) environments. It also demands much closer co-ordination between researchers monitoring ocean chemistry and those monitoring biological processes— activities that thus far have been unconnected. Although decades of data gathering may be needed before some correlations are proven, the ocean experts pressing for a new approach to research believe many correlations will become manifest in the next few years.
This report discusses how current ocean research approaches can be adapted to yield such correlations. And while decades may be required for some findings to be confirmed, the report also highlights opportunities to demonstrate causality today—environments where the impacts on biodiversity can be viewed in isolation from other stressors. When it comes to prodding policymakers into action, such results could bear fruit sooner rather than later.
Key takeaways
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Back to Blue Initiative, September 2024. Report.
