Mangrove forests, seagrass meadows, saltwater marshes – these and other ‘blue forests’ are vital to coastal and island communities around the world
Methodologies and Approaches
Methodologies sets out the procedures to follow and the steps to take to define the boundaries goals and scope of your project. There are many different methodologies and approaches for carbon accounting and ecosystem service valuation that have been used by the Blue Forests Project partners to provide evidence-based experience that supports replication, up-scaling and adoption of Blue Forests concepts by the international community and the GEF.
Methodologies for understanding blue forests can be project-scale, national or international. Guidance and methodologies can support business planning for blue forests ecosystems and the communities that depend on them. This builds appropriate policy pathways to support such actions in the long term. Management of tidal forests (including mangroves), tidal marshes and seagrass meadows are of interest to national and international climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts. While their conservation and restoration has been promoted for many decades, the renewed interest in their role in coastal resilience in times of rising sea levels as well as the most recent “new” ecosystem service, namely carbon sequestration and storage, have triggered the commissioning of several scientific as well as policy guidance documents furthering understanding of these ecosystems.
360 Planting Mangroves at Plan Vivo Launch Madagascar
360 harvesting plantation
How do you value and understand blue forests ecosystem services?
Blue forests ecosystems provide many goods and services that can be valued in both economic and cultural values. Economic valuation – attaching a value to costs and benefits – is fundamental to assessing the value of ecosystem services. Economic valuation is usually described in monetary terms but this is just one of many units of measurement. There are also several categories of services to understand when looking at an ecosystem.
Although the regulating value of carbon sequestration can have value on the voluntary carbon market for global beneficiaries, there might also be provisioning services that are valuable for local beneficiaries that can create additional value to project activities.
Examples of types of ecosystem services include:
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Provisioning services: the benefits that ecosystems provide in the form of ‘products’ or ‘goods’ that are consumed by humans or used in the production of other goods. They include fish, nuts, timber, water and genetic resources.
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Regulating services: the benefits derived from an ecosystem’s control of natural processes such as climate, disease, erosion, water quality and supply, pollination and protection from natural hazards such as storm and wave damage.
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Cultural services: the non-material benefits people obtain from ecosystems such as recreation, spiritual values and aesthetic enjoyment.
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Supporting services: biodiversity and natural processes such as nutrient cycling and primary production that maintain the other services.
In addition to analyzing and recognizing the aforementioned services, ecosystem service valuations can help project practitioners better understand the tradeoffs with conservation and restoration activities and set the framework for effective project planning. There exists many resources for guidance on valuing ecosystem services including:
Lab Work Explanation
Measuring tree circumference
What carbon accounting methodologies are needed for blue carbon projects?
A number of methodologies are employed to assess the amount of carbon projected to be conserved or restored by VCM blue carbon projects. This includes assessments of above-ground biomass and below-ground carbon stocks. Protocols for the measurement, monitoring and reporting of structure, biomass and carbon stocks in mangrove forests and approaches to accurately measure, monitor and report species composition and structure, aboveground biomass, and carbon stocks of mangrove ecosystems are included in most technical guidance documents. This includes the rationale, design, field measurements, analysis and reporting for carbon assessments in mangrove ecosystems.
How do you conduct a feasibility assessment for a blue carbon project?
Key components needed to assess the feasibility of a carbon finance project are a carbon project methodology, a carbon market, landscape feasibility, assessment of additionality, greenhouse gas accounting, financial feasibility, legal feasibility, organizational feasibility, and a permanence assessment. The latter is integral for assessing project longevity and feasibility. A clear plan including organizational feasibility and structure combined with community engagement and involvement are integral in creating a successful carbon project.
What are the current innovative carbon accounting methodologies and tools available?
The Coastal Ecosystem Mapping and Media Viability Project applied advanced and pioneering unmanned aerial vehicle technology with companion software and mobile app to explore the viability of an innovative communications tool. It further evaluated the feasibility of mapping and assessing the geographic extent of coastal blue carbon ecosystems in a low cost and quantitative way.
Additionally, Blue Ventures' Google Earth Engine Mangrove Mapping Methodology (GEEMMM) is an intuitive, accessible and replicable approach that provides a ready-to-go methodology for non-expert practitioners to map and monitor mangrove ecosystems, enabling them to combine their local knowledge with GEE’s cloud computing capabilities. The GEEMMM—freely accessible to non-profit users—runs on detailed and well commented code within the GEE environment and is adaptable to any mangrove area of interest. GEEMMM outputs include multi-date classified maps, accuracies, and dynamic assessments.
UNEP-WCMC has also created the Blue Carbon Toolkit, which integrates both online (web-based) and offline (tablet-based) technology for assessing and validating coastal 'blue carbon' habitats by allowing users to create one or more areas of interest on a satellite map of implementation sites. On the front end of the toolkit, government departments and businesses can broadly assess the impact of development on coastal marine habitats and the associated blue carbon stock, helping to make informed decisions on future development. On the back end, scientists and managers can validate and update the spatial habitat extent based on the underlying satellite imagery, local knowledge or data received from field observations.
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The Coastal Ecosystem Mapping and Media Viability Project / AGEDI / 2016
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Google Earth Engine Mangrove Mapping Methodology / Blue Ventures
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New Technologies to Support Blue Forests Conservation / Blue Forests Project / July 2021 (Webinar)