Building Blue Carbon Projects - An Introductory Guide

8.3 Building the Case for Blue Carbon in Madagascar

Covering square kilometres,  Madagascar  has  Africa’s  fourth   largest extent of mangrove ecosystems. Mangroves provide critical goods and services to surrounding Malagasy communities including a significant majority of the energy needs for rural populations, primarily through logging activities to obtain charcoal and firewood. Despite the ecological benefits provided by mangroves, in many parts of the country degradation and rate of loss continues to increase. Presently, any large-scale or comprehensive management initiatives to curb or reduce degradation and deforestation are absent. Hence the dire need for innovative approaches that can support sustainable management, such as Blue Carbon. Blue Ventures, a social enterprise with a presence in Madagascar, has a proven record of novel, holistic marine conservation initiatives that directly improve livelihoods in some  of  the  world’s  poorest  coastal   communities. Blue Ventures has been exploring  Blue  Carbon’s  potential  to  promote   sustainable management since 2011. Through their Blue Forests project, Blue Ventures has been assessing the feasibility of and developing forest carbon (or REDD+) and other payments for ecosystem services approximately 2,800

Figure 12 Blue Carbon project sites in Madagascar.

projects centred on the conservation and sustainable use of mangrove forests. These projects all aim to build resilience to climate change, improve local livelihoods, safeguard biodiversity, and help mitigate global climate change. Through the Blue Forests project, sixteen full-time staff are currently  engaged with  communities  across  six  sites  along Madagascar’s west  coast  (Figure 12). The team includes conservationists, field technicians, geospatial analysts, ecologists, socioeconomic scientists, and community organizers. A key aim of the Blue Forests project is to, in time, build community-led projects that will empower coastal communities to equitably participate in mangrove REDD+. If such projects are to be built, methodologies specific to mangroves are necessary. To accomplish this, the team has spent much of 2013 working through a Verified Carbon Standard (VCS)-approved methodology for avoided deforestation projects - a methodology developed for terrestrial forests. By working through this approved methodology in its entirety, the project is making robust estimates of the

Building Blue Carbon Projects An Introductory Guide

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