Acidification of the oceans is a major threat to marine¹ life and humanity's food supply, Hilary Benn is to warn as the UN climate summit resumes.

海洋酸化对海洋生物以及人类的食品供应是一项主要的威胁。

Acidification of the oceans affects marine life

The UK environment secretary will say that acidification酸化 provides a "powerful incentive动机，刺激" to cut carbon emissions².

Ocean chemistry is changing because water absorbs吸收 extra CO2 from the air.

Some believe this could be as big an impact of rising CO2 levels as climatic change, though it is rarely discussed within the UN climate convention.

The UN summit in Copenhagen, which started a week ago, is scheduled to conclude on Friday, when more than 100 world leaders will attend in an effort to agree a new global treaty on climate change.

'Really important'

The science has come to prominence突出，显著 only within the last five or six years, and most of the details were not available when the convention大会，协定 was signed in 1992.

"We know that the increasing concentration of CO2 [in the air] is making the oceans more acidic," Mr Benn told BBC News.

"It affects marine life, it affects coral, and that in turn could affect the amount of fish in the sea - and a billion people in the world depend on fish for their principal首要的 source of protein.

"It doesn't get as much attention as the other problems; it is really important."

In September, the UN-backed study into The Economics of Ecosystems⁴ and Biodiversity (Teeb) concluded that the widely-endorsed target of trying to stabilise atmospheric⁵ concentrations of CO2 or their equivalent to等于，相当于 around 450 parts per million (ppm) would prove lethal致命的 to much of the world's coral.