U.S. States Play Major Role Boosting, Expanding ‘Blue Carbon’

State governments have an important role to play in tackling climate change. By developing strategies and targets to remove climate-warming greenhouse gases (GHGs) from the atmosphere and curbing new GHG emissions, they can help support their economies and make communities and ecosystems more resilient to rising temperatures.

Seagrasses—flowering marine plants that form dense underwater meadows—boost coastal economies and can capture and store significant amounts of climate-harming carbon, known as “blue carbon.” But they are also one of the most imperiled ecosystems on Earth, declining globally at 7% each year. Up to 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide are released annually worldwide from degraded coastal ecosystems, including seagrasses—an amount equivalent to the emissions from 222 million gas-powered cars on the road for a year.

Coastal habitats in the U.S., many of which are vulnerable and declining, provide significant benefits to people, marine life, and the climate, and would benefit from comprehensive monitoring and management, according to a new white paper from Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Energy, Environment and Sustainability

California can measurably enhance the capture of climate-warming carbon dioxide by expanding efforts to conserve and restore the state’s tidal wetlands and eelgrasses, according to a new report conducted by the San Francisco Estuary Institute with support from The Pew Charitable Trusts. Tidal marsh and seagrass ecosystems, which cover approximately 57,000 acres throughout the Golden State, are known as “blue carbon” habitats because of their ability to efficiently capture and store carbon at rates comparable to, or even greater than, those of forests.