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2. Strengthening local Ecosystem-based Management to support
Ecosystem Services including Blue Carbon
To fully capitalise on these findings and ensure that important ecosystem
services are enhanced and protected, it is recommended that Abu Dhabi
undertake four important lines of research:
1. Confirm the potentially most valuable areas as a priority, and eventually
focus planning and conservation efforts to them, safeguard valuable
ecosystem services from impacts, and to start on a systematic
assessment of ecosystem service ‘hotspots’.
2. Fully determine the condition of Blue Carbon ecosystems, using
widespread application of the Ecosystem Services Assessment protocol
under a statistically robust sampling regime. The purpose of this would
be to better understand which Blue Carbon ecosystems are delivering
maximum services, and for those Blue Carbon ecosystems that are
degraded, allow identification of the root causes or drivers behind threats.
3. Enhance the understanding of the hydrology and oceanography of Abu
Dhabi’s nearshore waters and coastal systems, including flows through
mangrove channels, sea level changes, and patterns of inundation.
This is necessary to be able to model responses to climate change,
as well as predicted outcomes resulting from restoration, protection,
or – alternatively – ecosystem loss. It is suggested that such applied
research be focused first and foremost on the areas estimated to support
the greatest concentration of ecosystem services (as identified in the
ecosystem services assessment).
4. Survey stakeholders and the populace of Abu Dhabi to appraise the
perceived value of marine goods and services, including recreational and
cultural values attached to coastal landscapes/seascapes, the value of
hazard risk minimisation for developers, insurers, and investors, and the
public health values associated with maintaining ecosystem health and
minimising disease.
Improving the robustness of information relating to ecosystem services
in this way will facilitate enhanced planning, in which trade-offs can be
evaluated and outcomes predicted. Reliable ecosystem services information
will also allow bona fide adaptive management, through which natural capital
can be optimally safeguarded (Figure 12). Such adaptive management will
both increase efficiency and reduce costs of management and, importantly
allow for greater resilience in the face of climate change and other global
scale variability to come (Beatley, 2009).
Light availability
Marine protected area
Present
Figure 12
Valuation framework
(UNEP, 2011)
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