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Local scientists have proposed a comprehensive mapping of the Caribbean’s ‘blue carbon’ resources, as part of the answer to the effective management of climate change threats to the region’s multibillion-dollar blue economy.
Blue carbon refers to organic carbon captured and stored by oceans and coastal ecosystems, and in particular by vegetated coastal ecosystems, such as seagrass meadows, tidal marshes and mangroves.
The destruction or degradation of such blue carbon resources causes the emission of greenhouse gases, which fire the warming of the planet that fuels climate change.
“The Caribbean has yet to quantify its blue carbon stocks, which limits its ability to leverage the public global good that their maintenance, conservation and preservation brings,” writes physicist Professor Michael Taylor and others in the October 2020 book The Caribbean Blue Economy.
Taylor, together with other noted scientists, including Professor Mona Webber, Dr Tannecia Stephenson and Felicia Whyte, authored the book chapter titled ‘Implications of climate change for Blue Economies in the Wider Caribbean’.
“Arguably, the Caribbean should lead the efforts for equivalent compensation agreements as exists for the preservation and compensation of forestry (e.g., the REDD+mechanism) given the size of the resources it may possess and the immense vulnerability of those resources to climate change,” the researchers write.
Their recommendation comes against the background of the climate risks to not only living resources, including coral reefs and mangroves, but also critical sectors such as tourism and fisheries that rake in billions of dollars for the Caribbean each year.
Climate threats to the regions living resources include intense rainfall periods with increased sedimentation and nutrient inputs that blanket reefs in sediments, reducing light for photosynthesis.
At the same time, increased sea surface temperatures mean bleaching, which kills or weakens corals, making them more susceptible to disease. This is while sea level rise drowns seagrass by a reduction in optimal depth and effective light intensity, while mangroves face coastal ‘squeeze’, or lack of space for upland migration.
FISHERIES CHALLENGES
When it comes to sectors such as fisheries, the impacts are already posing significant risk.
“Changes in environmental conditions impact abundance, distribution and availability of fish populations, while the increasing frequency of extreme climate events affect fish habitat, productivity and distribution, and have direct impacts on coastal communities dependent on the fishing industry. Many of these communities are already vulnerable due to poverty and the lack of social services and essential infrastructure,” write the researchers.
As for shipping and trade, the evidence of what is at stake is region-wide.
“For one-metre sea level rise, it is projected that 3108 km2 of Caribbean coastal land will be lost, 21 out of 64 (32%) of CARICOM airports inundated, and 80% of CARICOM ports will have adjacent lands inundated if no protective measures are undertaken (Simpson et al, 2010). Monioudi et al (2018) show that for a further half-degree global warming the critical international transportation assets in Jamaica and Saint Lucia are vulnerable to operational disruptions and increased costs, mostly due to increasing temperatures and exceedance of high temperature thresholds, and increasing coastal inundation of the airport and seaport assets,” the researchers revealed.
The port cities of Port of Spain (Trinidad), Kingston (Jamaica), Georgetown (Guyana), Nassau (Bahamas) and Paramaribo (Suriname) are identified as examples of those already affected by sea level rise and flooding which may worsen at higher global temperatures, while Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) is counted among the leading port cities globally with the greatest increase in risk due to future climatic changes.
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