Andreas A. Hutahaean, Jakarta | Opinion | Tue, August 28 2012, 4:17 AM
Paper Edition | Page: 6
While
carbon dioxide emissions reductions are currently at the center of
global climate change discussions, the critical role of coastal-marine
ecosystems for carbon sequestration or as sinks has been overlooked or
even neglected. The reasons are mainly due to the lag of scientific data
because of the complexity of coastal-marine ecosystems.
In
Indonesia, these ecosystems have not received sufficient attention
considering their importance for climate change strategy, as most of the
attention has gone to terrestrial ecosystems, such as the forest and
agricultural sectors.
Moreover,
the Indonesian program on REDD (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation
and Forest Degradation) is running slow and its forest moratorium has
not worked well, making it unlikely that the Indonesian government will
meet its pledge to reduce carbon emissions by 26 percent by 2020.
Tropical
coastal-marine ecosystems such as mangroves and seagrass meadows are
known as hot spots for biodiversity and for their valuable ecosystem
services. Recently, scientists found out about the important functions
of the ecosystems as carbon sequestration or sinks. This carbon,
captured by coastal-marine organisms through photosynthesis, has been
called blue carbon.
In
this process, mangrove and seagrass binds carbon dioxide and water,
and, with the assistance of sunlight, is converted into sugars and
oxygen to support their growth. The remaining excess production of the
plant is buried in the sediment, where it can remain stored.
Indonesia,
an archipelagic country, is located along the equator at the heart of
the so-called Coral Triangle. The nation’s geography causes warm climate
over the country and has made the Indonesian coastal-marine environment
become a suitable habitat for the growing of mangroves and seagrass.
Recently,
researchers found that seagrass meadows could store up to 83,000 tons
of carbon/m3/km2, mostly in the sediments beneath them. In comparison,
terrestrial forests store about 30,000 tons of carbon/m3/km2, most of
which is in the form of wood. This study was the first global analysis
of carbon stored in seagrass and the finding was published in Nature
Geoscience in May.
The
study also estimates that, although seagrass meadows take up small
percentage of global coastal area (about less than 0.2 percent of
world’s oceans), they are responsible for more than 10 percent of all
carbon buried annually in the sea.
Similar
to seagrass, mangrove ecosystems have been known for their high
productivity in the carbon cycle. The ecosystem can store a large amount
of carbon in the deep organic sediment in which it thrives. It has the
ability to store five times as much carbon as has been observed in
temperate, boreal and tropical rainforests. This high amount carbon
storage suggests mangroves could play an important role in climate
change mitigation.
However,
Indonesia’s blue-carbon ecosystems are among the world’s most
threatened. About 3 to 7 percent of the ecosystems are disappearing
every year, with the worst conditions found on the north coast of Java.
The main reasons is mostly dredging, the degradation of water quality,
deforestation and aquaculture activities.
A
pilot project on Indonesian Blue Carbon in Banten Bay found at least 70
percent of the mangrove ecosystem was lost to aquaculture farms or land
reclamation, while only 20 to 30 percent was used effectively by
fisherman. To overcome these problems, strong attention from local
communities and the government are needed.
Healthy
natural coastal-marine ecosystems, such as mangrove and seagrass,
provide a vast array of important co-benefits to coastal communities,
particularly fishermen. These benefits include ecosystem services such
as the protection of shorelines from storms, erosion or sea-level rise;
the provision food from fisheries; the maintenance of water quality and
landscapes for ecotourism.
In
a blue carbon context these ecosystems also store and sequester a vast
amount of carbon in sediments and biomass. Also from a global
perspective, blue carbon mostly covers the tropical coastal-marine
environment and is among the most effective carbon sinks known today.
Having
the largest mangrove and seagrass ecosystems in the world makes blue
carbon important for Indonesia’s climate change strategy, not only in
international forums, but also to fulfill the government’s pledge to
reduce carbon emissions by up to 26 percent by 2020.
The
writer is principal investigator of the Indonesia Blue Carbon Project
and a researcher at the Coastal and Marine Resources Research Center at
the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry.
Sumber:
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