This story was initially revealed by Grist. You’ll be able to subscribe to its weekly newsletter here.
Seagrass beds and mangrove timber within the Bahamas’ crystal-clear waters could quickly be drafted into the battle towards local weather change.
The Caribbean nation plans to supply “blue carbon” credit this 12 months as a means for corporations internationally to offset their emissions, the nation’s prime minister introduced final week. The island nation shall be one of many first to promote ocean-based credit, and hopes to make use of the proceeds to put money into local weather resilience initiatives.
Coastal ecosystems, comparable to seagrass meadows and mangrove forests, are a number of the world’s strongest carbon sinks, storing three to five times more carbon per hectare than tropical forests. They achieve this primarily by storing useless and decaying plant matter within the ocean flooring, in addition to sequestering carbon by pulling it straight from the air and water. Final 12 months, a global team of researchers found that these marine habitats already retailer as much as 30 billion tons of carbon — almost as a lot because the world emitted in 2021 from fossil fuel burning alone.
The Bahamas is dwelling to more than 1,600 square miles of mangrove forests and different marine ecosystems that function beneficial carbon sinks — not less than $300 million value, in accordance with Prime Minister Philip Davis. However they’re threatened by harm from hurricanes and coastal growth, points that he mentioned the revenues from the carbon credit score gross sales would assist deal with.
“I need to see a Caribbean that’s not dumped on any additional,” Davis mentioned on the Caribbean Renewable Power Convention in Miami, according to Bloomberg. “We’re a serious carbon sink for the world, and we have to profit from cleansing the Earth’s ambiance.”
It would permit polluters to maintain polluting. It’s like: ‘Watch my stunning blue carbon venture over right here, whereas I’m not doing something about my emissions over there.’
Carbon offsets work in two methods: Firms pays to protect already-existing ecosystems, stopping new carbon from being launched into the ambiance. Or they will finance the rehabilitation of degraded or destroyed habitats, which then go on to soak up extra carbon dioxide. Each strategies permit firms and people shopping for credit to proceed polluting, so long as their emissions are equal to the carbon being saved by the venture they help — the premise for claims to “carbon neutrality.” In principle, these strategies may be an important tool to fight local weather change, and conservationists are selling blue carbon initiatives as a strategy to preserve threatened marine habitats.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Local weather Change, the United Nations’ main local weather physique, has promoted blue carbon as a means for nations to fulfill their obligations underneath the Paris Settlement, and international locations comparable to the US, Australia and Kenya have already begun together with marine habitats of their carbon accounting. Companies have additionally seen a possibility in blue carbon; Apple and Gucci have each invested in initiatives that protect mangrove forests in Central and South America.
However related carbon offset applications focusing on forests and grasslands have been plagued with accusations of fraud; builders have been caught inflating the amount of carbon sequestered by forests or preserving land that was already protected. And a few ecosystems have been destroyed by wildfires even after they had been claimed for credit.
They’ve additionally been criticized as a type of “greenwashing,” excusing corporations and international locations from the work of really transitioning to carbon-free vitality sources — a chance that some consultants concern could possibly be repeated with “blue carbon” credit.
These points, nonetheless, haven’t slowed the speedy growth of carbon markets, that are anticipated to be value as a lot as $546 billion by 2050, in accordance with BloombergNEF, a clear vitality analysis agency.
“You shouldn’t let anyone persuade you or say that that is the silver bullet to resolve local weather change, as a result of it’s not. The chance is definitely fairly restricted,” Cath Lovelock, a coastal ecology researcher on the College of Queensland, Australia, told China Dialogue Ocean. “And it would permit polluters to maintain polluting. It’s like: ‘Watch my stunning blue carbon venture over right here, whereas I’m not doing something about my emissions over there.’”
