The Abu Dhabi Blue Carbon Demonstration Project

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).

Present

Marine protected area

Light availability

Figure 12 Valuation framework (UNEP, 2011)

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