Connect: GRID-Arendal Annual Report 2017

Working in the blue world

Healthy coastal and marine ecosystems – such as seagrass meadows and mangrove and kelp forests – provide many important benefits including food security, shoreline protection against storms and flooding as well as recreational opportunities. Worldwide, they regulate atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and help moderate climate. The challenge of recognizing these values and harnessing them to support improved ecosystem management and sustainable communities is the focus of GRID-Arendal’s Blue Carbon Programme.

Our efforts include awide range of actions – fromeducation and raising awareness, to regional capacity development, on the ground demonstrations, international climate

policy, and social justice for communities related to carbon finance. In 2017, these activities mainly took place under the UN Environment/Global Environment Facility Blue Forests project and the Norwegian Blue Forests Network. A regional training workshop was held in Panama to share experiences from the sites of the Blue Forests project with local and regional partners. It explored the development of similar initiatives within the Latin America and Caribbean Region.

Through the Blue Forests project, we have created awareness to the community and showed them how the resources that surround them can be harnessed to solve their poverty and other social challenges. James Kairo, Kenyan Marine Fisheries Research Institute “

Local fishermen on the coast of Zanzibar return their boats for the evening.

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