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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.
