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Blue Carbon Finance Workshop Summary
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Land-use change in the coastal zone has led to worldwide degradation of marine coastal ecosystems and a loss of the goods and services they provide. Restoration is the process of assisting the recovery of an ecosystem that has been degraded, damaged, or destroyed and is critical for habitats where natural recovery is hindered. Uncertainties about restoration cost and feasibility can impede decisions on whether, what, how, where, and how much to restore. Here, we perform a synthesis of 235 studies with 954 observations from restoration or rehabilitation projects of coral reefs, seagrass, mangroves, saltmarshes, and oyster reefs worldwide, and evaluate cost, survival of restored organisms, project duration, area, and techniques applied. Findings showed that while the median and average reported costs for restoration of one hectare of marine coastal habitat were around US$80 000 (2010) and US$1 600 000 (2010), respectively, the real total costs (median) are likely to be two to four times higher. Coral reefs and seagrass were among the most expensive ecosystems to restore. Mangrove restoration projects were typically the largest and the least expensive per hectare. Most marine coastal restoration projects were conducted in Australia, Europe, and USA, while total restoration costs were significantly (up to 30 times) cheaper in countries with developing economies. Community-or volunteer-based marine restoration projects usually have lower costs. Median survival of restored marine and coastal organisms, often assessed only within the first one to two years after restoration, was highest for saltmarshes (64.8%) and coral reefs (64.5%) and lowest for seagrass (38.0%). However, success rates reported in the scientific literature could be biased towards publishing successes rather than failures. The majority of restoration projects were short-lived and seldom reported monitoring costs. Restoration success depended primarily on the ecosystem, site selection, and techniques applied rather than on money spent. We need enhanced investment in both improving restoration practices and large-scale restoration. © 2016 The Authors Ecological Applications published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
Ecosystem services such as protection from storms and erosion, tourism benefits, and climate adaptation and mitigation have been increasingly recognized as important considerations for environmental policymaking. Recent research has shown that coastal ecosystems such as seagrasses, salt marshes, and mangroves provide climate mitigation services because they are particularly effective at sequestering and storing carbon dioxide, referred to as “coastal blue carbon”. Unfortunately, degradation of blue carbon ecosystems due to anthropogenic impacts contributes to anthropogenic carbon emissions from land use impacts and prevents these ecosystems from continuing to sequester and store carbon. Given the impressive carbon sequestration and storage in coastal ecosystems, many countries with blue carbon resources are beginning to implement blue carbon restoration projects using carbon financing mechanisms. This study analyzed four case studies of projects in Kenya, India, Vietnam, and Madagascar, evaluating the individual carbon financing mechanisms, the project outcomes, and the policy implications of each. Strengths and challenges of implementing blue carbon projects are discussed and considerations that all projects should address are examined in order to develop long-term sustainable climate mitigation or adaptation policies. This analysis can help to inform future project design considerations as well as policy opportunities.
Seagrass ecosystems provide numerous ecosystem services that support coastal communities around the world. They sustain abundant marine life as well as commercial and artisanal fisheries, and help protect shorelines from coastal erosion. Additionally, seagrass meadows are a globally significant sink for carbon and represent a key ecosystem for combating climate change. However, seagrass habitats are suffering rapid global decline. Despite recognition of the importance of “Blue Carbon,” no functioning seagrass restoration or conservation projects supported by carbon finance currently operate, and the policies and frameworks to achieve this have not been developed. Yet, seagrass ecosystems could play a central role in addressing important international research questions regarding the natural mechanisms through which the ocean and the seabed can mitigate climate change, and how ecosystem structure links to service provision. The relative inattention that seagrass ecosystems have received represents both a serious oversight and a major missed opportunity. In this paper we review the prospects of further inclusion of seagrass ecosystems in climate policy frameworks, with a particular focus on carbon storage and sequestration, as well as the potential for developing payment for ecosystem service (PES) schemes that are complementary to carbon management. Prospects for the inclusion of seagrass Blue Carbon in regulatory compliance markets are currently limited; yet despite the risks the voluntary carbon sector offers the most immediately attractive avenue for the development of carbon credits. Given the array of ecosystem services seagrass ecosystems provide the most viable route to combat climate change, ensure seagrass conservation and improve livelihoods may be to complement any carbon payments with seagrass PES schemes based on the provision of additional ecosystem services.
In this review paper, we aim to describe the potential for, and the key challenges to, applying PES projects to mangroves. By adopting a "carbocentric approach," we show that mangrove forests are strong candidates for PES projects. They are particularly well suited to the generation of carbon credits because of their unrivaled potential as carbon sinks, their resistance and resilience to natural hazards, and their extensive provision of Ecosystem Services other than carbon sequestration, primarily nursery areas for fish, water purification and coastal protection, to the benefit of local communities as well as to the global population. The voluntary carbon market provides opportunities for the development of appropriate protocols and good practice case studies for mangroves at a small scale, and these may influence larger compliance schemes in the future. Mangrove habitats are mostly located in developing countries on communally or state-owned land. This means that issues of national and local governance, land ownership and management, and environmental justice are the main challenges that require careful planning at the early stages of mangrove PES projects to ensure successful outcomes and equitable benefit sharing within local communities.
Afforestation is a primary tool for controlling desertification and soil erosion in China. Large-scale afforestation, however, has complex and poorly understood consequences for the structure and composition of future ecosystems. Here, we discuss the potential links between China's historical large-scale afforestation practices and the program's effects on environmental restoration in arid and semi-arid regions in northern China based on a review of data from published papers, and offer recommendations to overcome the shortcomings of current environmental policy. Although afforestation is potentially an important approach for environmental restoration, current Chinese policy has not been tailored to local environmental conditions, leading to the use of inappropriate species and an overemphasis on tree and shrub planting, thereby compromising the ability to achieve environmental policy goals. China's huge investment to increase forest cover seems likely to exacerbate environmental degradation in environmentally fragile areas because it has ignored climate, pedological, hydrological, and landscape factors that would make a site unsuitable for afforestation. This has, in many cases, led to the deterioration of soil ecosystems and decreased vegetation cover, and has exacerbated water shortages. Large-scale and long-term research is urgently needed to provide information that supports a more effective and flexible environmental restoration policy.
T raditional Chinese approaches to ecosystem restoration have focused on affores-tation as an important tool for controlling desertification. However, the long-term results of this practice increasingly show that these projects are actually increasing environmental degradation in arid and semiarid regions, with ecosystems deteriorating and wind erosion increasing. Rather than focusing solely on affores-tation, it would be more effective to focus on re-creating natural ecosystems that are more suitable for local environments and that can thus provide a better chance of combating desertification. Arid and semiarid regions make up ~40% of the earth's land surface and are home to ~20% of the human population, but these areas are increasingly being affected by desertification (1). A half-century policy of forest exploitation, livestock overgraz-Trenches were dug parallel to the contours during planting to prevent downslope erosion and collect slope runoff for the trees. The decreased vegetation cover can offset this advantage by increasing wind erosion.
Blue carbon refers to the considerable amounts of carbon sequestered by mangroves, seagrass beds, tidal marshes and other coastal and marine vegetated ecosystems. At the present time, carbon market mechanisms to compensate those conserving blue carbon ecosystems, and thus reducing carbon emissions, are not yet in place. The ecosystem services provided by coastal vegetated ecosystems extend beyond their carbon storage capacity, and include their contribution to fishery production; shoreline protection; provision of habitat for wildlife and migratory species; flood water attenuation; nutrient cycling, pollution buffering; as well as their cultural, spiritual, subsistence and recreational uses. Because these services are of high economic, social and cultural value, the management and protection of blue carbon ecosystems could build collaboration between climate change and biodiversity practitioners on the national and international level. Such collaboration would also allow for the transfer of lessons learned from coastal management and conservation activities to carbon mitigation projects, and would include the need to work closely together with indigenous peoples and local communities. Resulting management activities on the local level could utilize and strengthen traditional knowledge and management systems related to blue carbon ecosystems, and increase both the resilience of biodiversity and that of coastal communities, as well as provide for long-term storage of blue carbon. While the challenge of scaling up local initiatives remains, some concrete examples already exist, such as the network of locally-managed marine areas (LMMAs) in the Pacific and beyond.
Summary Continental-scale carbon accounting capable of the spatial and temporal distinctions demanded by the Kyoto Protocol requires a modelled approach which integrates over space and time the effects of changing land use, land management and climate variability. To assist in the development of Australia's National Carbon Accounting System (NCAS), the Australian Greenhouse Office has developed and calibrated an integrated suite of models relevant to Australian conditions for which data were available or could be generated for their application. These point-based models were then made operational within a GIS environment to enable application at a fine spatial (25 m) and temporal (monthly) resolution for the Australian continent. This paper focuses on the FullCAM model, capable of carbon accounting in transitional (afforestation, reforestation and deforestation) and mixed (e.g. agroforestry) systems. The FullCAM model can be run in a spatial mode which integrates information drawn from remotely-sensed land-cover change, modelled productivity surfaces, mapped resource inventories and other ancillary data to perform the various accounting procedures for Australia's NCAS. This framework has been developed in parallel with a range of data collation, model calibration and verification activities across the continent. The framework provided by FullCAM has allowed highly specific and therefore targeted and cost-effective model calibration and verification activities. FullCAM, as the analytic model for Australia's NCAS, will continue to be refined within the established framework.
We tested four reforestation techniques in tropical forest fragments that were damaged by fire in upland Madagascar. We conducted a full-factorial experiment on the survival of transplanted seedlings of five native tree species in grassland plots adjacent to the forest fragments in the Ambohitantely Forest Reserve. The species studied were Dodonaea madagascariensis, Filicium decipiens, Olea lancea, Podocarpus madagascariensis, and Rhus taratana. A total of 480 seedlings were planted; 207 survived the 15 months of the experiment. The factors examined were distance of the reforestation plots from the forest, mixing of forest soil into the plots, application of chemical fertilizers, experimental shading of plots, and the cover of naturally establishing shrubs. Both increasing the distance of plots from the forest edge and adding chemical fertilizers significantly reduced the survival of all seedlings. The surprising negative effects of fertilization may be partly due to increased competition from naturally establishing shrubs that are adapted to exploit high nitrogen levels. Mixing soil from the forest areas into the plots did not change seedling survival. Shading reduced the survival of D. madagascariensis seedlings and did not increase the survival of any species. These findings suggest that the success of reforestation projects can be increased by planting seedlings close to the existing forest fragments. Reforestation of similar tropical forests is likely to be more successful if efforts are focused on expanding the size of existing fragments of tropical forest, rather than on establishing new fragments in grassland openings.
Developing a Framework for Blue Carbon in Australia: Legal and Policy Considerations
- J Bell-James
Bell-James, J., 2016. Developing a Framework
for Blue Carbon in Australia: Legal and
Policy Considerations. UNSWLJ.
Financing Options for Blue Carbon Opportunities and Lessons from the REDD + Experience
- D Gordon
- B C Murray
- L Pendleton
- B Victor
Gordon, D., Murray, B.C., Pendleton, L., Victor, B.,
2011. Financing Options for Blue Carbon
Opportunities and Lessons from the REDD
+ Experience 1-28.
Coastal blue carbon: methods for assessing carbon stocks and emissions factors in mangroves, tidal salt marshes, and seagrasses
- J Howard
- S Hoyt
- K Isensee
- M Telszewski
- E Pidgeon
Howard, J., Hoyt, S., Isensee, K., Telszewski, M.,
Pidgeon, E., 2014. Coastal blue carbon:
methods for assessing carbon stocks and
emissions factors in mangroves, tidal salt
marshes, and seagrasses.
Conservation finance: moving beyond donor funding toward an investordriven approach
- F Huwyler
- J Käppeli
- K Serafimova
- E Swanson
Huwyler, F., Käppeli, J., Serafimova, K., Swanson,
E., 2014. Conservation finance: moving
beyond donor funding toward an investordriven approach. Credit Suisse, WWF.
Green payments for blue carbon: Economic incentives for protecting threatened coastal habitats
- B C Murray
- L Pendleton
- W A Jenkins
- S Sifleet
Murray, B.C., Pendleton, L., Jenkins, W.A., Sifleet,
S., 2011. Green payments for blue carbon:
Economic incentives for protecting
threatened coastal habitats, NIcholas
Institute Report.