Making the deep blue sea green again as nature wants it
UNITED NATIONS: Kids growing up in the Seychelles think of the ocean as their backyard, says Ronald Jean Jumeau, Seychelles’ ambassador for climate change and SIDS.
“Our ocean is the first and eternal playground of our children, they don’t go to parks they go to the ocean, they go to the beach, they go to the coral reefs, and all that is just collapsing around them,” Jumeau told IPS.
The tiny country off the East Coast of Africa is one of 39 UN member states known as small island states, or as Jumeau likes to call them: “large ocean states.”
Ambassadors and delegations from these 39 countries often speak at UN headquarters in New York steadfastly sounding the alarm about the changes to the world’s environment they are witnessing first hand. Jumeau sees these island states as sentinels or guardians of the oceans.
He prefers these names to being called the canary in the gold mine because, he says: “the canaries usually end up dead.”
Yet while much is known about the threats rising o land states, much less is known about how these large ocean states help defend everyone against the worst impacts of climate change by storing “blue carbon.”
“We are not emitting that much carbon dioxide but we are taking everyone else’s carbon dioxide into our oceans,” says Jumeau.
“There’s three billion people around the world that are primarily dependent on marine resources for their survival and so they depend on what the ocean can produce,” – Isabella Lövin, Sweden’s deputy prime minister.
Despite decades of research, the blue carbon value of oceans and coastal regions is only beginning to be fully appreciated for its importance in the fight against climate change.
“There’s proof that mangroves, seas salt marshes and sea grasses absorb more carbon (per acre) than forests, so if you’re saying then to people don’t cut trees than we should also be saying don’t cut the underwater forests,” says Jumeau.
This is just one of the reasons why the Seychelles has banned the clearing of mangroves. The temptation to fill in mangrove forests is high, especially for a nation with so little land, but Jumeau says there are many benefits to sustaining them.
Mangroves guard against erosion and protect coral reefs. They are also provide nurseries for fish.
But its not just coastal forests that take carbon out of the atmosphere. Oceans also absorb carbon, although according to NASA their role is more like inhaling and exhaling.
The Seychelles, whose total ocean territory is 3000 times larger than its islands, is also thinking about how it can protect the oceans so they can continue to perform this vital function.
The nation plans to designate specific navigation zones within its territories to allow other parts of the ocean a chance to recover from the strains associated with shipping.
The navigation zones will “relieve the pressure on the ocean by strengthening the resilience of the oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide and ocean acidification,” says Jumeau. — IPS
Our ocean is the first and eternal playground of our children, they don’t go to parks they go to the ocean, they go to the beach, they go to the coral reefs, and all that is just collapsing around them. Ronald Jean Jumeau, Seychelles’ ambassador for climate change and SIDS