Assessing food security through the lens of ocean acidification

Ocean acidification (OA), driven by anthropogenic carbon dioxide emissions from the combustion of fossil fuels, is causing substantial changes in marine systems. Increased acidity of the marine environment alters its carbonate chemistry, increasing the solubility of naturally forming calcium carbonate minerals, such as aragonite and calcite. This effect has dire consequences for organisms that use these minerals as the building blocks for their skeletons and shells, directly affecting certain species of corals, shellfish, phytoplankton, sea urchins and algae. The impacts of OA are changing various aspects of coastal and marine ecosystems and environments foundational to ensuring the food security and nutrition (FSN) of billions of people. OA has been identified as a threat to human health and wellbeing, including through alterations in food quality and quantity, and regional and local scale OA vulnerability assessments have found food security be the socioeconomic system most at risk. Yet, the recognition that OA is a threat to food security and to ‘blue foods’ is primarily found in OA-specific epistemic communities and is rarely discussed in broader global conversations on food security. Here, we reorient the existing predominantly physical science knowledge of OA impacts toward an FSN framing. Viewing FSN through an OA lens can inform more holistic solutions to the complex interactions between the two phenomena. It is our aim in this presentation to produce a more nuanced and useful understanding of the impacts of OA on food security, which can in turn be used to inform global policy and adaptation approaches that better consider the intersection of these two issues.