Building Blue Carbon Projects - An Introductory Guide

4 Blue Carbon and the Valuation of Other Ecosystem Services Blue Carbon ecosystems provide a wide range of important ecosystem services to many coastal and island states. It is hoped that these services prove to be sufficiently valuable to support better governance, based on the premise that human communities generally only take care of that which we value. The recognition of multiple ecosystem values may provide added momentum to sustainable policies in a combined Blue Carbon and ecosystem services approach.

Figure 6 Ecosystem se rvices provided by coastal Blue Carbon habitats (adapted from Samonte et al ., 2010).

Ecosystem Services as Blue Carbon Co-Benefits

Coastal ecosystems that generate Blue Carbon usually provide other valuable ecosystem services. These services may be provisioning services that generate goods, such as fisheries resources, energy, materials, areas for recreation or tourism, etc.; supporting and regulating services that maintain ecosystems and support life on earth; or cultural and spiritual services that contribute significantly to human well-being (Figure 6). Mangroves, saltwater marshes, seagrasses, and other coastal and marine ecosystems are naturally productive, and are considered valuable in regards to this production, but they are also vitally important in supporting a broader array of organisms on land, in freshwater, and at sea. They not only fix and store carbon, but they also stabilise shorelines, protect property and life from catastrophic storms, maintain water quality by filtering pollutants, play a role in disease regulation, support fisheries and biodiversity more generally, and bolster human spirit and enterprise. Collectively these ecosystem services support human communities and the natural world as a whole. Yet many such functions are difficult to attach economic value to -- thus these habitats are generally under-valued.

Building Blue Carbon Projects An Introductory Guide

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