By: Alyson Lundstrom
(Originally Published on ZeroMe APP)
“No water, no life. No blue, no green. No ocean, no us.”
-Sylvia Earle, First Female Chief Scientists of NOAA
The key to climate change might just be in invisible things; where they’re at, what’s holding them, and what happens if they let go.
We know greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) running free in the atmosphere at intensifying amounts, are not a good thing. We know human activity is exacerbating their creation and are told we must slow their creation or be weary of an ever-thinning ozone layer that keeps our Earth’s climate in check.
While we’re out here carpooling, installing solar lights, and limiting our meat consumption, there is a whole ecosystem out here doing the heavy lifting to mitigate humanity’s bad choices. Coastal and marine ecosystems have been storing our environmental indiscretions, tucked away like a therapist's notepad. But what happens when they are damaged or destroyed?
What is Blue Carbon
Blue Carbon is the capture and sequestering of carbon emissions by the earth’s coastal and ocean ecosystems in something known as a “carbon sink”- anything that absorbs more carbon from the atmosphere than it releases.
While we strive to reduce our “carbon footprint,” coastal habitats that include salt marshes, seagrasses, and mangroves, are collecting our earthen sins and storing them away for hundreds or even thousands of years in their soil. In fact, they are so efficient at this task they can capture and store carbon at ten times the rate of mature tropical rainforests.
Coastal Habitats, Our Heroes
What you need to know about these critical storage units of the world:
The coastal habitats that hold onto our carbon account for only 2% of the total ocean area, a minuscule amount compared to our forests, making them some of the most productive ecosystems on earth.
83% of the global carbon cycle is circulated through the oceans.
Sediment storage in coastal habitats accounts for half of all sequestered carbon from the ocean.
Coastal wetlands sequester carbon at a rate of ten times their tropical rainforest counterparts.
Coastal wetlands can also store 3-5 times the volume of carbon because it is done through the soil rather than the above-ground plant materials like tropical rainforests.
Blue Carbon Kryptonite
The ocean plays a critical role in the global carbon cycle, absorbing approximately 25% of human-generated CO2 which is then distributed throughout the ocean. The question now becomes, if coastal ecosystems are storing so much of the carbon emissions we know are harmful to our earth, what happens when these precious storage units are degraded or removed?
When these systems are damaged or decimated not only is their ability to sequester carbon lost but the stores of carbon within these systems can be rereleased, exacerbating the levels of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere.
Human activity is undoing nature’s best clean-up activities. The loss of coastal ecosystems is primarily a result of the commercial development of housing, ports, and commercial facilities. Experts believe that over 1 billion tonnes of carbon emissions are released annually due to the degradation of coastal ecosystems.
The Blue Carbon Market
Besides an obvious need to protect and restore our coastal ecosystems to maintain their “Blue Carbon” benefit, there are ways we can act within corporate sustainability strategies.
The Carbon Credit Market that companies use to offset carbon footprints has now grown to include Blue Carbon Credits. Spurned by regulatory demand or voluntary measures, companies who strive for “net zero,” business models that understand that the world must be both “blue” and “green” can now invest in credits. Each credit purchased will remove one metric tonne of CO2 emissions from the atmosphere.
The initiative to offset emissions by purchasing these credits shouldn’t just be considered a carte blanche permission slip to emit without remorse. According to the World Economic Forum, before purchasing “Blue Carbon Credits'', companies should first:
Reduce before offsetting
Champion community first, and use nature positive strategies
Share as learn, learn as you go
Act with transparency
Committing to the preservation of coastal and ocean ecosystems is an investment into the future, and the ability of coastal and marine ecosystems to mitigate global climate change should not be underestimated.
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