This week, Conference of the Parties 25 (COP25) takes place in Madrid and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) has launched a new Blue Carbon app to celebrate.
The app was born from a need for countries to realise the power of ‘blue carbon’ in their nationally determined contributions (NDCs) at this year’s meetings. The NDCs are key to unlocking the commitments made under the Paris Agreement. Each country states the actions they will take to reduce its emissions to alleviate catastrophic climate change. These contributions focus on climate change mitigation solutions. They tend to involve reducing fossil fuel consumption, setting net-zero emissions targets and tree planting initiatives. However, this year TNC wants to encourage more ‘blue-sea’ thinking when it comes to updating NDCs.
What is blue carbon?
Blue carbon is the ability of marine and coastal plant life such as seagrasses, tidal marshes and mangroves to draw down and sequester carbon. Almost 83% of global carbon is stored in the ocean and half of that is stored within coastal sediments beneath these ecosystems.
An Infographic showing the climate change mitigation potential of blue carbon along with the ecosystem services it can provide. Taken from Pemsea
A study by Herr et al. revealed that 77% of countries have blue carbon habitats that could be included in their NDCs as a mitigation strategy. However, only 19% of these countries included blue carbon. It is a vastly under-acknowledged resource on the climate change mitigation agenda.
The new app from TNC lets countries with mangrove habitats analyse their individual potential for blue carbon sequestration as shown in the video below:
A screencast of the Mapping Ocean Wealth explorer blue carbon tool launched by TNC at this year’s COP25 – accessed here
This initiative is a great start in helping governments efficiently account for mangroves in their NDCs. The next step is to upscale this tool to realise the true value of all marine and coastal habitats in the fight against climate change.
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