4.4 Lecture 1: Interview on fisheries, climate vulnerability and blue carbon

 

• What is blue carbon and why is it important, according to the Environmental Justice Foundation?  

Blue Carbon in clear definition by Environmental Justice Foundation is referring to the carbon sequestration in the marine ecosystem, in other words, using the marine plant, phytoplankton, mangroves to sequestrate carbon over a long period of time without releasing it into the atmosphere. Living things in the water store carbon and preventing its release into the atmosphere. The blue carbon is important in mitigating the GHG produced by human activities such as pollutions, from both the land and sea. How amazing it is to understand that the ocean stores CO2 for over 1000 years. The one question I imagined is what will happen when large amount of ocean plant and animals are exploited and not enough to sequestrate the Carbon emitted in the atmosphere? And the most dismaying feature is the rapid increased deforestation of terrestrial plants and mangroves forests.     

• Challenges for conserving blue carbon

The challenges of conserving Blue carbon is hugely dependents on the unsustainable exploitation of the ocean resources. The most challenge is reducing or prohibiting the IUU fishing, which destroys the ocean bottoms dredging everything in the ocean, polluting the ocean plants and animals. What about the exploitation of the mangrove forest for fish processing and general use of wood for energy in the coastal communities?  To what extent do these people are aware of the important of these plants and understanding the reason for conserving them. Many countries do have good policy but the challenge is compliance by violators. Developing countries normally lack capacity for transpiracy, accountability and compliance in their policies that protect their marine resources against countries that fish in distant water like China.

·       Opportunities

There is potential to conserve the ocean blue carbon, the global support to the fishing industries could be reduce to minimized the potential of IUU fishing and support the afforestation of mangrove and reduce over fishing. It also good to understand the interrelationship of the local communities and the ocean and invest in alternative livelihood enhancements for them to reduce the fishing and it related activities that reduces the deforestation of mangrove and other marine plants.