The Challenge of Blue Carbon - Nautilus
▻https://nautil.us/the-challenge-of-blue-carbon-298510
A mangrove swamp might contain 25 times as much carbon as a similar patch of terrestrial forest.
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“Blue carbon isn’t cheap,” agrees Emily Landis, climate and ocean strategy lead within The Nature Conservancy’s Global Tackle Climate Change team. She hopes that if the per-ton price of carbon continues to increase, and the science of blue carbon becomes more settled, the funding gap will shrink. TNC has more blue carbon projects in the pipeline, including some that it hopes will generate carbon credits within a year.
Landis worries that as blue carbon grows in popularity, it might fall prey to the type of lower quality or even fraudulent schemes that have plagued forestry projects. “There are going to be issues because there always are where money is involved,” she says. “Investors need to be asking questions before they purchase these carbon credits.”
TNC, in partnership with Conservation International, Salesforce, and the World Economic Forum, is developing guidelines for what constitutes a high-quality blue carbon project—including, apart from all the scientific and logistical considerations, sharing revenues with local communities. Without their support, the long-term viability of projects is uncertain.
Even if the numbers add up, though, sea level change could pose an existential problem for some projects. Wetlands submerged by rising seas are likely to release around half of their stored carbon , according to Lane. “The biggest upset of the whole Luling project was trying to prove sustainability over a 50- to 100-year time span,” he says. “Proving that a wetland can survive through sea rise predictions of a meter to two meters is rather problematic, because really it can’t. If there’s a rise of two meters by the end of the century, most of the wetlands in the world are going to be submerged.” This is crucial because the highest-quality verifications, like those provided by Verra, won’t issue credits unless a project is assured of permanence for at least 100 years.
Friess is more optimistic, noting that coastal ecosystems will vary in their response to climate change. “There are some mangrove forests that will be resilient to sea level rise, because they can increase their surface elevation at the same rate,” he says. In the United States, however, a recent analysis by the U.S. Geological Survey estimates that landward migration of coastal wetlands will not counter seaward losses. Potential migration will likely occur at the expense of either coastal freshwater wetlands, or uplands such as croplands, forests, and pastures.
Whatever the eventual fate of coastal wetlands, these blue carbon ecosystems should help soften the impacts of climate change in years to come by providing fish habitats, trapping pollutants, and absorbing storm surges and other extreme weather. Mangroves alone are estimated to already provide more than $82 billion in annual storm protection globally. TNC says that it is in the final stages of getting approval and validation for monetizing that protection into something called a resilience credit, to be sold alongside the carbon credit. Resilience credits are calculated by looking at the number of people and the value of assets like farms and dwellings protected by coastal ecosystems.
“We do know that there is interest in the marketplace for resilience credits,” says Landis, “and that blue carbon credits get a higher price with resiliency on top.” The hope is that projects generating both credits would ultimately cover the entire cost of conservation or restoration.
Ultimately, blue carbon credits face the same dilemma as any nature-based climate solution. A financial framework creates incentives to support the valuable work ecosystems do in storing carbon and protecting communities. The moment those benefits are monetized, though, opportunities to game the system emerge. Yet while it is obviously absurd to reduce the glorious, multifaceted complexity of a healthy swamp to a simple financial instrument, it may give it a better chance to persist—and even help—in the climate struggles that lie ahead.
“Blue carbon is not a get-out-of-jail-free card,” warns Friess. “But if we can do it correctly, reduce the risks, and overcome some of the barriers, I think it will play a small but meaningful contribution to solving the climate crisis.”
