An environmental reminder on Blue Carbon
The term “blue carbon” describes carbon that marine ecosystems sequester. Carbon dioxide (CO2) is one of the most significant greenhouse gases (GHGs) and a primary cause of climate change, as is widely recognised.
Since CO2 is the main greenhouse gas released by human activity, lowering its atmospheric concentration is essential to slowing down climate change. Reducing our actual CO2 emissions is the most sustainable approach to do this, but carbon storage is crucial for absorbing CO2 that is currently being released into the environment.
Carbon storage, which is another name for carbon sequestration, is the act of taking carbon out of the atmosphere and storing it in something called a carbon pool. This process happens naturally all the time, for example in our oceans and the coastal vegetation that surrounds them, even though it can be replicated or improved by technology.
How Does Blue Carbon Work?
As forests and trees are the most well-known natural carbon sinks, they have received the majority of attention in campaigns to encourage natural carbon sequestration. Blue carbon has just recently drawn more attention due to its ability to mitigate and adapt to climate change.
Blue carbon is thought to be essential for the worldwide storage of carbon, while research is still in its early stages. According to current research, marine ecosystems have the capacity to absorb even more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere than “green” land forests.
What role do these ecosystems play in removing carbon? Coastal marshes, mangrove forests, and seaweed—both above and below the surface—are effective carbon sinks in terms of vegetation. They can retain the acquired CO2 for thousands of years in their soil and sediments.
They accomplish this considerably more quickly than the planet’s woods, despite their much smaller size. For instance, seagrass is thought to contain between 10 and 18% of the ocean’s carbon dioxide, even though it only makes up 0.1% of the ocean floor.
The term “deep sea carbon” refers to the quantity of carbon that is stored in the water itself. According to estimates, the ocean can absorb 50 times more carbon than the atmosphere; in fact, the deep sea and its water column are thought by some scientists to be the planet’s greatest carbon sinks. Nevertheless, scientists worry that the ocean’s ability to store carbon will be reduced due to climate change and the acidity that follows.
Climate Change and Blue Carbon
Numerous strategies have been put forth thus far to fully utilise blue carbon.
Among them is “ocean afforestation,” which is the deliberate extension of naturally occurring seaweed beds, perhaps even into open waters. Another concept is to just put a lot of seagrass in the water by sinking it. Not only is it far more difficult to assess efficacy in the maritime environment due to its dynamic character than it is above ground, but experimenting with new approaches may have unforeseen social and environmental repercussions.
Adding coastal vegetation to the carbon market through the purchase and sale of carbon offsets is another potential strategy to encourage blue carbon and halt the loss of biodiversity. This would incentivize the conservation and repair of ecosystems.
The rate at which these marine ecosystems are disappearing, however, is a major barrier and cause for concern when it comes to blue carbon. Estimates indicate that between 2 and 7% of them disappear annually, making their decline more rapid than that of the world’s rainforests.
This indicates a decrease in the amount of carbon sequestered as well as a release of the previously stored carbon into the atmosphere, which fuels global warming. Thus, utilising the power of blue carbon requires protecting the environment first.
Conclusion
A potent barrier is created by extreme weather events like storms and tsunamis, which are predicted to happen more frequently as climate change advances. Human activities including urbanisation, aquaculture, and harvesting have reduced the amount of mangrove forests by more than 25% in the last 50 years.
In addition to threatening biodiversity, this also poses a challenge to mitigating and adapting to climate change, putting humans, plants, and animals in equal danger.
Blue carbon serves as a metaphor for how intertwined we are with the environment and how crucial environmental preservation is to the fight against climate change.
