LIFE Blue Natura organised last 25th November the seminar “Blue Carbon at the heart of a healthy climate” to promote the exchange of experiences and knowledge and to advance towards models of decarbonisation of the Spanish economy. Part of the LIFE Wetlnads4Climate team travelled to Malaga to learn about the results and continue working towards this common goal.
“At COP26 Glasgow, the role of ecosystem solutions and in particular marine and aquatic ecosystems in mitigation has been clearly recognised. It is a clear mandate for what countries need to work towards in the coming years,” said Valvanera Ulargui, Manager of the Spanish Climate Change Office of MITECO. “Blue carbon projects, such as marshes, poseidonia or mangroves, can mitigate per unit area 10 times more than temperate forests or 50 times more than tropical forests. Their importance is not what they remove annually, but what they have been removing for thousands of years, a stock that we must protect to preventan increasement of greenhouse gas emissions” said CSIC researcher and LIFE Blue Natura partner Miguel Ángel Mateo
Decarbonising the economy is paramount to reduce greenhouse gas emissions forcefully in the coming years. It is important for organisations to know their carbon footprint, after which they can consider a roadmap to reduce greenhouse gas emissions through different CO2 absorption projects. Once this roadmap has been initiated, those emissions that cannot be reduced could be compensated under different mechanisms, such as the one already offered by the Andalusian Regional Government through the Andalusian Emissions Compensation System (SACE), which has included blue carbon projects for the first time in Europe. LIFE Wetlands4Climate welcomes the fact that the Andaludian Regional Government has launched this complex emissions offsetting system, which already has two CO2 absorption projects approved under this mechanism: one on Posidonia restoration and the other on marshes, wetland restoration.
We hope that other regions of Spain will follow suit and promote the implementation of this type of mechanism to involve society in the conservation of aquatic ecosystems. As the general director of environmental quality and climate change of Junta de Andalucía, María López Sanchís, pointed out, “We have the perception of the problem, now we must bring the perception of the solution closer to the citizens”.
We recommend you to watch the full session which includes, among other things, an excellent review of the current voluntary carbon markets, shedding some light on the gibberish that is the carbon market, which is already beginning to speculate on the value of the carbon that we have not yet emitted or extracted.
VIDEO
- Blue Carbon at the heart of a healthy climate 1/3 https://fb.watch/9Vt3OBzzpN/
- Blue Carbon at the heart of a healthy climate 2/3 https://fb.watch/9VsNAR7Tss/
- Blue Carbon at the heart of a healthy climate 3/3 https://fb.watch/9VtbUSjxQk/
