MANADO, INDONESIA—Around 100 million people risk losing homes and livelihoods unless drastic steps are taken to protect Southeast Asia’s biologically diverse coral reefs that could be wiped out in coming decades because of climate change, an international environmental group warned on Wednesday.

In a 220-page study presented at the World Ocean Conference, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) said that rising water temperatures, sea levels and acidity threatened to destroy reefs in the Coral Triangle, a region labeled the ocean’s answer to the Amazon rainforest.

The Coral Triangle—which spans the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and East Timor—makes up 30 percent of the world’s coral reefs and 35 percent of coral reef fish species.

If carbon emissions are not cut by 25 percent to 40 percent by the year 2020, higher ocean temperatures could kill off vast marine ecosystems and half the fish in them, according to the WWF.

Successor agreement

The group said that collapse of the reefs would send food production in the region plummeting by 80 percent.

Such a disaster, according to the WWF, would imperil the livelihoods of a third of the 300 million people now earning a living off the sea’s natural resources, forcing them to leave the coast to find jobs in teeming cities.

Commercial fishing in the area generates roughly $3 billion in annual income.

Ministers and officials from over 70 countries are meeting in the Indonesian city of Manado for the World Ocean Conference, the first global meeting on the relationship between oceans and climate change.

Nations at the conference are hoping to pass a joint declaration aimed at influencing the direction of the global climate talks in the Danish capital Copenhagen in December to work out a successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol, which expires in 2012.

Gone by end of century

“If we don’t do anything, then the reefs are going to be gone by the end of this century and the impact on food security and livelihoods will be very significant,” WWF Coral Triangle Initiative Network head Lida Pet Soede told Agence France Presse.

“Some of the locations in the Coral Triangle are really important areas for all sorts of fish. The migration of tuna and turtles that spawn in the Coral Triangle are not going to have a next generation,” Soede said.

“Decisive action must be taken immediately or a major crisis will develop,” the WWF report said, citing 300 scientific studies and 20 climate change experts.

Deep emission cuts

“Hundreds of thousands of unique species, entire communities and societies will be in jeopardy.”

Saving the Coral Triangle will require countries to commit to deep cuts in carbon gas emissions when they gather for the Copenhagen talks.

Emission cuts of 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050 would be needed to avert the worst effects on the Coral Triangle, according to the report.

Heat-trapping carbon gases—notably from burning fossil fuels like coal, oil and gas—are blamed for warming Earth’s atmosphere and driving changes to weather patterns.

Overfishing

Local communities and governments will also have to curb overfishing and pollution, according to the WWF.

“If you continue down the path of the overexploitation of resources, even if you get an incredible reduction in emissions there will still be a threat,” said WWF climate campaigner Richard Leck.

A concurrent meeting will also see leaders from the six Coral Triangle nations pass a joint plan on conserving the region.

WWF campaigner Leck said any agreement to save the Coral Triangle would help limit damage to the region, which despite gloomy forecasts would likely be among the reef regions slowest to be ravaged by climate change.

“The Coral Triangle is potentially more resilient than other coral areas around the world and what is amazing is the level of political commitment we are seeing this week,” he said.

US funding

The US government is providing $40 million in funding for a five-year program in the Coral Triangle to improve management of marine and coastal resources.

“We are looking to promote better understanding of the role of the ocean in the climate system,” said Mary M. Glackin, US deputy undersecretary for oceans and atmosphere.

“It’s really a web of life. So you need to be concerned about the very smallest thing up to the very high predators,” she said.