A patch of seagrass barely visible from shore can lock away more carbon per acre than a tropical rainforest. This is blue carbon.
🏛️ Must Know
What Blue Carbon Actually Is
- The Definition Blue carbon is carbon captured and stored by oceans and coastal ecosystems. It’s not carbon from any land-based or fossil source.
- Three Ecosystems The three main blue carbon ecosystems are mangrove forests, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows, all found along coastlines worldwide.
- Where It’s Stored Most of this carbon sits in the waterlogged soils below these plants. It’s not just stored in their visible leaves and stems.
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📘 Good to Know
Why Blue Carbon Punches Above Its Weight
- A Tiny Footprint Mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows together cover only about 0.5 percent of the world’s ocean area.
- An Outsized Share Despite that small footprint, they account for more than half of all carbon buried in ocean sediments.
- Deeper, Longer Storage Their waterlogged soils can hold carbon up to six meters deep, keeping it locked away for centuries or millennia.
- A Rapid Loss These ecosystems are being degraded at roughly four times the rate of tropical forests. This undoes their storage faster than it built up.
📝 Previous Year Questions
UPSC CSP 2021 — What Blue Carbon Is
- UPSC 2021 Blue carbon is carbon captured by oceans and coastal ecosystems, not carbon stored in forest biomass, petroleum, or the atmosphere generally. See UPSC CSP 2021 GS Paper I, Q19. View this question.
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🌟 Great to Know
Blue Carbon as a Climate Policy Tool
- Restoration Value Restoring degraded mangroves and seagrass beds is now seen as a cost-effective climate mitigation strategy, alongside their other coastal-protection benefits.
- India’s Own Blue Carbon India’s coastline includes significant mangrove cover, especially in the Sundarbans. This gives it real stakes in blue carbon conservation policy.
- A Growing Carbon-Market Interest Blue carbon credits are increasingly traded in voluntary carbon markets, adding a financial incentive for coastal restoration projects.
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