🐋 Blue Carbon: underwater solution to climate change

What is blue carbon. Challenges of blue carbon credits. Funding climate solution with internet-native money.

I used to think that trees are the most important solution to solve climate change, thanks to the endless images of green lush forests in the media and various tree planting initiatives.

However, trees alone are not enough to capture all the carbon in our atmosphere.  Even if we maximize the number of trees that can be planted on earth, it will only be able to capture our global greenhouse gas emissions for around 10 years. Then what? 

As  land-based mammals, we sometimes forget that 70% of the Earth's surface is covered by water. And what lives in these waters might help us to solve climate change.

In this article, I will explain more about what is blue carbon, the challenges of blue carbon credits, and a web3 project that is funding climate solution with internet-native money.

🌊 What is blue carbon?

Blue carbon is a nature based solution for capturing carbon emissions in coastal and marine ecosystems.

According to McKinsey, blue carbon solutions have the potential to capture up to 3 Giga tons of emission/year, or around 7.5% of our annual global emission.

Here are some examples of blue carbon solutions:

1. Mangrove forest

Mangrove is a type of plant that grows in coastal areas, with branches growing from the seabed to  above water surface. In my teenage years, I have spent time fishing in the mangrove forest close to the Bali airport, but never really learned the importance of these plants, other than as a natural protection against sea water flooding. 

Now I learned that mangrove forest can actually capture more carbon emission up to 5x compared to tropical forest. It can suck up carbon emission, convert them into biomass, and store them into soils for hundreds of years.

2. Seagrass

Seagrass are those green gooey looking plants that you see under the sea. Seagrass is not to be confused with Seaweed that you find in sushi. Seaweed is an algae that does not have roots, while seagrass is a plant that has stem, roots, and leaves. 

Seagrass is also known as the lung of the sea, as it produces oxygen for marine biodiversity. Not only that, Seagrass can remove carbon emission efficiently, it can absorb carbon to its soil up to 50x faster than forests on land and though it only covers 0.2% of the ocean floor, it stores around 10% of the carbon buried in the ocean. 

It does so through photosynthesis, collection of organic carbon from other plants and animals, and lock up carbon in its sediments under the thick canopy of leaves

3. Other solutions: Wetlands and whales 

There are also other examples of blue carbon solutions that we should not forget about. 

For example, salt marshes or wetlands between saltwater and freshwater, store more than 20% of carbon emission absorbed worldwide, although it covers only 1% of Earth’s surface. These lands are very important to be protected, if it's destroyed for other land usages (e.g. shrimp farming), hundreds of years of stored carbon will be released into the atmosphere.

Marine wildlife protection is also an important part of blue carbon. Take whales as an example. This huge magnificent being can capture around 33 tons of CO2 in their bodies, and when they die the carcass will sink to the seafloor, providing carbon to support the deep-sea ecosystem and integrated into the sediments. 

Not only that, as whales rise up to the ocean surface, it also contributes to the production of phytoplankton, organisms that generate 50% of the atmosphere’s oxygen and capture 40% of CO2 produced (Wow! Thanks Plankton).

Source: Natural Carbon Sinks: Blue Carbon ecosystems in climate change mitigation, 2021

🤔 The challenges of blue carbon credits

Similar to other carbon avoidance (e.g. renewable energy) or carbon sequestration (e.g. afforestation) projects, there is huge potential for blue carbon to generate carbon credits. Unfortunately, I found that the number of blue carbon credit projects are much smaller compared to other types of projects due to several challenges.

The first challenge is verification. Well known organizations like Verra have only developed methodology to certify blue carbon projects in the last couple of years, and might take some time to scale blue carbon certification. There are also concerns of the high uncertainties of the actual carbon stored in coastal ecosystems as it varies between locations and are more prone to changes (e.g. continuously evolving shoreline affected the landscape of mangroves forest).

Second is financial. Some argue that the current market price of carbon is not high enough to make many blue carbon credit projects financially viable. Others also said that it's still hard for Blue Carbon projects to secure funding through grants and usually requires loans that requires lengthy due diligence process.

Source: Sustainability memes

🌀 Spirals protocol: funding climate projects with internet-native money

This week, I just made a new internet friend, Helena Merk (YC Alumni, serial founder) who is building regenerative infrastructure for blockchain with her new project called Spirals Protocol.

Spirals will be working in the Celo network as a validator. For those who are not familiar with Celo, it is a global payment infrastructure that aims to democratize financial access to anyone with a mobile phone and support impactful decentralized applications on its blockchain, such as universal basic income and crowdfunding for social causes. Celo has its own internet-native money called Celo dollars (Read more about Celo from Packy’s Not Boring newsletter).

As a validator, Spirals will provide service to the user in the Celo network by verifying transactions in the blockchain. As Celo token holders (or users) choose to stake (lock and vote) their Celo with Spirals, both those staking and Spirals will earn reward tokens from the network.

Unlike other validators that only operate for maximum profit, Spirals takes those rewards and uses it to pre-finance newer carbon removal projects like blue carbon. For example, Spirals have partnered with GreenTrade, a Berlin based startup that converts carbon credits as tradeable NFT, to tokenize and fund Seagrass projects in Menorca (Spain) and Blue Whale projects in the Atlantic ocean.

In summary, Spirals provide a new source of funding for new types of carbon removal projects by purchasing futures of tokenized natural assets (e.g. blue carbon credits) and taking the risk that corporate buyers of conventional carbon credits cannot.

Source: Spiral Gitcoin page

💙 Conclusion

Blue carbon solution is going back to mother nature, while Spirals is adopting new blockchain technology. Both nature and technology are key to solving climate change.

When you go to the beach this summer, remember about blue carbon and say thanks to the seagrass, mangrove, or whales that you encountered. 

Thanks for reading this article and enjoy the weather ☀️.

*Article poster by Benjamin L. Jones