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Building Blue Carbon Projects
An Introductory Guide
8.4
An Integrated Blue Carbon Program for the Indonesian Archipelago
Indonesia features vast Blue Carbon and
associated ecosystems, mangroves in particular.
Yet Indonesia’s mangrove forests are also among
the world’s most threatened habitats. Annually,
three-to-seven per cent of Indonesia’s mangroves
are degraded by dredging, deforestation,
aquaculture, and unsustainable use by local
fishermen (Hutahaean, 2012). Indonesia’s
seagrass beds are also threatened and it is
estimated that about 30-40 per cent of its
seagrass beds have been lost (UNEP, 2004).
A research team from Indonesia’s Agency for
Research and Development of Marine and
Fisheries has been overseeing a field project
across four sites within the Indonesian
archipelago (including Derawan Islands - East
Kalimatan, Tomini Bay - North Sulawesi, Banten
Bay and Tanjung Lesung - Banten) to study
mangroves and seagrass ecosystems. This Blue
Carbon project has been funded by the Ministry
of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Republic of
Indonesia.
This research seeks to promote the sustainable
management of those ecosystems, by first
establishing a robust scientific case about their
carbon sequestration and storage capacities.
Teams of local scientists and researchers have
collected samples of mangrove and seagrass
biomass and sediment for analysis of their carbon
content and sequestration ability. The team
collected samples from different types of sites,
both rehabilitated and intact mangroves.
Analysing these sites for comparison allows
scientists to better understand the sequestration
abilities in relationship to land conversion.
The field team also carried out extensive mapping activities of both types of ecosystems, in order
to conduct spatial analysis for the extent and ecosystem degradation over time. One of the
challenges here is obtaining good quality remote sensing images for seagrasses. Thus, an aim of
Measuring trunk diameter at breast height (DBH) of
mangrove ecosystem in Derawan Islands, East
Kalimantan, Indonesia.
Quadrant transect for observing seagrass ecosystem
in Tomini Bay of North Sulawesi, Indonesia (Images
credit BALITBANG KP.).
