COPENHAGEN (Reuters) – More than 250 million people  risk losing their livelihoods because of dying tropical coral  reefs in what a senior UN environmental economist said   yesterday was part of a double climate 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 told reporters in Copenhagen.

Negotiators from nearly 200 countries are trying to seal the  outlines of a broader climate pact that aims to sharply cut  emissions of planet-warming greenhouse gases.

The leaders of more than 100 countries arrive next week  hoping to overcome deep differences on who should cut emissions,  by how much and who should pay.
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.

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.