The Federal Government warns against the effects of climate change on fish populations in the tropics and thus on the food basis of the people living there. "It is expected that fish populations are moving in the direction of the poles, so that in the tropics with the local extinction of species is to be reckoned," says a government response to a request from the Greens, the news agency AFP present.
This "displacement of species distribution" endangers the livelihoods of the population there, the answer goes on to say. Reference is also made to scientific findings, according to which the warming "will continue to cause a massive coral bleaching with high mortality rates to extinction". The decline of coral seen for decades has been further accelerated by a higher water temperature and the progressive acidification of the oceans.
Australia, for example, downgraded the threat status of the Great Barrier Reef from "bad" to "very bad" last summer. The unique reef has been threatened for years. Recently, experts had found that in 2016 just under a third of all coral had died off the northeast coast of the Australian state of Queensland. The Great Barrier Reef is home to about 400 coral species, 1500 species of fish and thousands of mollusc species. Many species are threatened.
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The imminent loss of such coral reefs "leads to drastic ecological and social consequences worldwide", said the Green nature conservation expert Steffi Lemke. "Millions of people are threatening to lose vital food sources and the most biodiverse ecosystems of our seas are being irretrievably destroyed," she warned.
Lemke referred to analyzes by the organization Brot für die Welt, according to which fishing grounds provide income for nearly one billion people and make an important contribution to 2.5 billion people to meet their daily protein needs. In this context, the Green politicians accused the federal government of insufficiently tackling climate change. Especially urged Lemke on a conversion of coal exit and traffic turnaround.
After a long dispute, the governing coalition on Friday had passed a climate protection bill with the votes of the Union and the SPD. The opposition factions in the Bundestag opposed the bill, which contains emissions targets for different economic sectors, however, from. The Greens called the law at best inadequate and counterproductive in many places. "You have failed in the human task of climate protection," criticized faction leader Anton Hofreiter the grand coalition.