But Urgent Action Needed
to Maintain and Restore 'Blue Carbon' Sinks
Warns Three UN Agencies
Cape Town, Nairobi,
Rome, Paris, 14 October 2009 - A 'Blue Carbon'
fund able to invest in the maintenance and
rehabilitation of key marine ecosystems
should be considered by governments keen
to combat climate change.
A new Rapid Response
Report released today estimates that carbon
emissions-equal to half the annual emissions
of the global transport sector-are being
captured and stored by marine ecosystems
such as mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses.
A combination of reducing
deforestation on land, allied to restoring
the coverage and health of these marine
ecosystems could deliver up to 25% of the
emissions reductions needed to avoid 'dangerous'
climate change.
But the report, produced
by three United Nations agencies and leading
scientists and launched during National
Marine Month in South Africa, warns that
far from maintaining and enhancing these
natural carbon sinks humanity is damaging
and degrading them at an accelerating rate.
It estimates that up
to seven percent of these 'blue carbon sinks'
are being lost annually, or seven times
the rate of loss of 50 years ago.
"If more action
is not taken to sustain these vital ecosystems,
most may be lost within two decades,"
says the report Blue Carbon: the Role of
Healthy Oceans in Binding Carbon launched
by the United Nations Environment Programe
(UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO) and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic
Commission of UNESCO.
Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary
General and UNEP Executive Director, said:
"We already know that marine ecosystems
are multi-trillion dollar assets linked
to sectors such as tourism, coastal defense,
fisheries and water purification services-now
it is emerging that they are natural allies
against climate change."
"Indeed this report
estimates that halting losses and catalyzing
the recovery of marine ecosystems might
contribute to offsetting up to seven percent
of current fossil fuel emissions and at
a fraction of the costs of technologies
to capture and store carbon at power stations,"
he added.
The new report comes
less than 60 days before the crucial UN
climate change convention meeting in Copenhagen
where governments need to Seal the Deal
on a comprehensive new agreement.
It is likely that nations
will agree to pay developing economies to
maintain the 'green carbon' in forests under
a partnership-Reduced Emissions from Deforestation
and Forest Degradation (REDD).
Mr Steiner added: "The
links between deforestation and climate
change are firmly on the political radar
and there is optimism that REDD will form
part of a new global climate partnership,
but the role and the opportunity presented
by other ecosystems are still overlooked."
"If the world is
to decisively deal with climate change,
every source of emissions and every option
for reducing these should be scientifically
evaluated and brought to the international
community's attention-that should include
all the colours of carbon including now
blue carbon linked with the seas and oceans."
Dr. Carlos Duarte, one
of the chief scientists of the report based
at the Mediterranean Institute of Advanced
Studies in Spain, said: "We know that
land use change is part of the climate change
challenge. Perhaps less well known is that
the global loss of what we could call our
"blue carbon sinks', such as mangroves
and seagrasses, are actually among the key
components of the increase in greenhouse
concentrations from all land use changes."
Christian Nellemann,
Editor of the Rapid Response report, said:
"There is an urgency to act now to
maintain and enhance these carbon sinks
- since the 1940s, over 30% of mangroves;
close to 25% of salt marshes and over 30%
of seagrass meadows have been lost. We are
losing these crucial ecosystems much faster
than rainforests and at the very time we
need them - on current trends they may be
all largely lost within a couple of decades."
"Fishing and aquaculture
communities will be heavily impacted by
climate change and have a key role to play
in maintaining healthy ocean ecosystems
in the face of change," said Ichiro
Nomura, Assistant Director-General for Fisheries
and Aquaculture at FAO.
"An ecosystem approach
to the management of ocean and coastal areas
cannot only enhance their natural carbon
sink capacity, but also offers a way to
safeguard and strengthen food and livelihood
security for fisheries-dependent communities,"
he added.
Officials with UNESCO
also underlined the important role the oceans
are already playing in offsetting climate
change and its impacts on humanity, but
warn that this is having consequences too.
"Because the ocean
has already absorbed 82% of the total additional
energy accumulated in the planet due to
global warming, it is fair to say that the
ocean has already spared us from dangerous
climate change," says Patricio Bernal,
Assistant Director-General of UNESCO, IOC
Executive Secretary. "But each day
we are essentially dumping 25 million tons
of carbon into the ocean. As a consequence,
the ocean is turning more acidic, posing
a huge threat to organisms with calcareous
structures."
Luciano Fonseca of UNESCO-IOC
explains that the ocean's absorption of
the planet's excess heat "is like a
glass of whisky with ice. As long as the
ice is there the whisky stays cool. The
energy that is going into the glass, from
your hand and room temperature, is working
to convert the ice to liquid. As soon as
the ice melts the whisky turns warm."
Key Findings from the
Rapid Assessment Report
Of all the biological
carbon, or green carbon captured in the
world, over half (55%) is captured by marine-living
organisms - not on land - hence the new
term blue carbon.
Marine-living organisms
range from plankton and bacteria to seagrasses,
saltmarsh plants and mangrove forests.
The ocean's vegetative
habitats, in particular, mangroves, salt
marshes and seagrasses, cover less than
1% of the seabed.
These form the planet's
blue carbon sinks and account for over half
of all carbon storage in ocean sediment
and perhaps as much as over 70%.
They comprise only 0.05%
of the plant biomass on land, but store
a comparable amount of carbon per year,
and thus rank among the most intense carbon
sinks on the planet.
Blue carbon sinks and
estuaries capture and store between 235-450
Teragrams (Tg C) or 870 to 1,650 million
tons of CO2 every year - or the equivalent
of up to near half of the emissions from
the entire global transport sector which
is estimated annually at around 1,000 Tg
C, or around 3,700 million tons of CO2,
and rising.
Preventing the further
loss and degradation of these ecosystems
and catalyzing their recovery can contribute
to offsetting 3-7% of current fossil fuel
emissions (totaling 7,200 Tg C a year or
around 27,000 million tons) of CO2 in two
decades - over half of that projected for
reducing rainforest deforestation.
The effect would be
equivalent to at least 10% of the reductions
needed to keep concentrations of CO2 in
the atmosphere below 450 ppm needed to keep
global warming below two degrees Celsius.
Combined with action
under REDD, halting the degradation and
restoring lost marine ecosystems might deliver
up to 25% of emission reductions needed
to keep global warming below two degrees
Celsius.
Unlike carbon capture
and storage on land, where the carbon may
be locked away for decades or centuries,
that stored in the oceans remains for millennia.
Currently, on average,
between 2-7% of our blue carbon sinks are
lost annually, a seven-fold increase compared
to only half a century ago.
In parts of southeast
Asia losses of mangroves since the 1940s
are as high as 90%.
Large-scale restoration
of mangroves has been successfully achieved
in Vietnam's Mekong Delta and salt-marsh
restoration in Europe and the United States.
Countries with extensive,
shallow coastal areas that could consider
enhancing marine carbon sinks include India;
many countries in southeast Asia; those
on the Black Sea; in West Africa, the Caribbean,
the Mediterranean, eastern United States
and Russia.
Maintaining and Recovering Marine Ecosystems-the
Wider Benefits
Coastal waters account
for just seven percent of the total area
of the ocean. However, the productivity
of ecosystems such as coral reefs, and these
blue carbon sinks mean that this small area
forms the basis of the world's primary fishing
grounds, supplying an estimated 50% of the
world's fisheries.
They provide vital nutrition
for close to three billion people, as well
as 50% of animal protein and minerals to
400 million people of the least developed
countries in the world.
The coastal zones, of
which these blue carbon sinks are central
for productivity, deliver a wide range of
benefits to human society. These include
filtering water, reducing effects of coastal
pollution, nutrient loading, sedimentation,
protecting the coast from erosion and buffering
the effects of extreme weather events.
Coastal ecosystem services
have been estimated to be worth over US$25,000
billion annually, ranking among the most
economically valuable of all ecosystems.
Much of the degradation
of these ecosystems not only comes from
unsustainable natural resource use practices,
but also from poor watershed management,
poor coastal development practices and poor
waste management.
The protection and restoration
of coastal zones, through coordinated integrated
management would also have significant and
multiple benefits for health, labour productivity
and food security of communities in these
areas.
Notes to Editors:
The report "Blue
Carbon - The Role of Healthy Oceans in Binding
Carbon" can be accessed at www.unep.org
or at www.grida.no, including high and low
resolution graphics for free use in publications.
The report will be released
at 10.30 am Oct. 14 at the DIVERSITAS biodiversity
science conference, Cape Town Conference
Center, South Africa (www.diversitas-osc.org)
or http://dev.grida.no/RRAbluecarbon/pdfs/update/
The Blue Carbon report
compliments a report launched by UNEP on
the occasion of World Environment Day 2009
called The Natural Fix?-The Role of Ecosystems
in Climate Mitigation http://www.unep.org/pdf/BioseqRRA_scr.pdf
Nick Nuttall, UNEP Spokesperson/Head of
Media
Catherina (Marina) Joubert, Acting Communications
Person for the Diversitas Conference and
SOUTHERN SCIENCE, South Africa, Science
Communication Editor of SciDev.Net
