Blue carbon is a term coined for carbon sink in the oceans including coastal vegetation such as sea grasses, tidal marshes, and mangrove forests. These ecosystems can sequester more carbon per unit area than terrestrial forests and are beneficial to climate change adaptation to sea level rise.
Mangrove ecosystems are very productive ecosystems located in tropical and sub-tropical coasts. Mangrove ecosystems in the world are of great ecological, economic, and social importance because they are both supportive of the lives of coastal population and serve as an indirect means of coastal protection. Globally, mangrove forests are increasingly singled out as a promising ecosystem for climate change mitigation owing to their large carbon stocks. Mangrove forests are also diverse in their benefits to man and the environment. However, the location along the coast places them at an unfavourable position with urban development. Two of the major sources of mangrove loss globally are agriculture and anthropogenic causes.
The Nigerian Mangrove Forest is ranked fourth largest in the world and largest in Africa but has become increasingly dilapidated due to the pollution and unsustainable use of resources. It is therefore important that sustainable use of mangrove resources should be encouraged and stakeholders in Nigerian mangrove forests be educated on the management of mangrove resources for future generations.
In Nigeria, oil pollution is the main source of mangrove forest loss, followed closely by urban development projects. However, a subtle loss of mangrove forests stems from the use of mangrove wood as fuel wood by local communities for both household and commercial purposes. One way to manage mangrove harvesting is to utilize best use practice. This entails harvesting mangrove wood in such a way to prevent complete loss of the tree. Hence, it is important to educate stakeholders on how this resource can be managed. Uncontrolled mangrove harvesting in Nigeria can result in the colonization of nipa palm resulting in mangrove habitat loss.
The theme for Blue Carbon Solutions 2020’s International Day for the Conservation of Mangrove Ecosystem: Towards a Sustainable Use of Mangrove Wood Resources stemmed from one of the major ecosystem services (ES) from mangrove forests: Provision. Some ES from mangrove forests include protection from extreme weather conditions, regulatory services, carbon stock and fisheries. However, the ES of provision of fisheries and wood from mangrove forests is under threat if proper methods are not applied in harvesting these resources. We aim to bring to light a means of sustainable use of mangrove resources by sharing laws that govern mangrove forests and share the current state of mangrove forests in Nigeria. We also aim to present some guidelines on sustainable mangrove wood harvesting and plan a workshop going in future on how these can be applied.
We celebrated World Mangrove Day this year on Tuesday, 26th July 2022. Some of the major take-home messages from the webinar we hosted were:
1. Sensitisation: One of the major foundations of mangrove conservation is the education of stakeholders in the ecosystem. This involves workshops that give more information on the ecosystem services mangrove provide for various stakeholders.
2. Inter-agency collaboration: Review of national environmental regulations (with the inclusion of best practices from international agencies) should be reviewed to be specific to the nation’s blue carbon ecosystem with collaboration from other stakeholders including local communities and NGOs.
3. Innovative Conservation Initiatives in Nigeria:These initiatives can move away from generalised setting up of protected areas but also make avenues for community-led conservation initiatives.
Blue Carbon Solutions Global Limited will in the future start a sensitisation program in Nigeria. This will be in the form of workshops on Ecosystem Services and Sustainable Wood Harvesting. One of our main aims is to use science to inform policy. We will start by embarking on a Blue Carbon Demonstration Project to assess the carbon potential of mangrove forests in Nigeria.
