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Last Updated: Feb 18th, 2008 - 14:39:01 |
GENEVA (Reuters) - Climate change is warming oceans, rivers and lakes and threatening fish stocks already under pressure from overfishing, pollution and habitat loss, the environmentalist group WWF warned on Friday.
The decline in numbers of fish could have a devastating impact on human populations, particularly in poorer countries that rely on fish for protein, it said in a report.
Higher temperatures reduce oxygen levels, stunt growth, reduce food supplies and can force fish to seek cooler waters to which they may not be as well adapted, WWF added.
"As climate change kicks in it adds to the pressure on already strained fish populations," said Katherine Short, WWF's fisheries officer.
The WWF urged a coming United Nations meeting in Montreal, Canada, from November 28-December 9 to set tougher targets for reducing greenhouse gases from power plants, factories and cars, which many scientists say are driving up temperatures worldwide.
The meeting will review the U.N.'s Kyoto protocol and ways to widen it to non-participants including the United States and developing states like China and India when it runs out in 2012.
WWF said it was vital to hold any rise in global temperature to below 2 degrees Centigrade, considered the trigger level for dramatic climatic and environmental changes.
Temperatures have risen by 0.7 of a degree since the industrial revolution, but some scientists forecast they could climb by 1.4-5.8 degrees this century.
SPECIES DISAPPEARING
"If we fail to secure deeper reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, we will increase the pressures on fish and billions of people that depend on them as an important source of protein," said Stephan Singer, head of WWF's European unit.
WWF estimates that 76 percent of the world's fisheries are already fished to their limit.
Even slight changes in temperature can force economically important fish to move their feeding and breeding grounds, hurting local, small-scale fishing activity most.
For example, cod, plaice and halibut are expected to become scarce in U.S. and southern Canadian waters, and cod is likely to disappear from the southern North Sea, one of its main spawning areas, the WWF said.
Suitable habitat for trout, whitefish and bass and more than 20 other cool and cold water fish in the United States could fall as much as 50 percent due to the effects of global warming.
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