They might not look as pretty as coral reefs or as lush as rainforests, but seagrass meadows are just as important and deserve as much attention and protection. Despite its nondescript appearance, seagrass supports an abundance of wildlife, which in turn sustains human livelihoods.
As major carbon stores, they play a key role in mitigating the effects of climate change by sucking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and holding it in their dense root system and the surrounding sediment for centuries.
They’re better at sequestration, as it’s called, than land-based forests. A hectare of seagrass sequesters as much carbon as 15 hectares of Amazon rainforest.
Now The Bahamas — site of one of the largest expanses of seagrass in the world, a fact recently confirmed by researchers — plans to use their seagrass and other climate change-fighting aquatic treasures like mangroves to help earn the income necessary to conserve them and deal with the increasingly harsh effects of the climate crisis.
“Even small countries like ours have a role to play in helping our planet move towards net zero,” said Phillip Davis, Prime Minister of The Bahamas, in his budget communication speech last May.
Net zero is a projected state of equilibrium, where as much carbon dioxide is being removed from the atmosphere as is being emitted. Carbon sinks like seagrass meadows and forests are an important part of getting to net zero.
The Bahamas has been severely affected by hurricanes, which have become more frequent and powerful because of global warming, and Davis has become one of the Caribbean’s leading voices on climate change.
“The goal to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees is on life support. This is a hard truth for many to admit,” he said last year as he addressed world leaders at COP27, the United Nations’ annual climate change conference. “Even the best-case scenarios,” he said, involve “almost unimaginable upheaval and tragedy.”
“Let’s get real,” he intoned. “It’s only going to get worse.”
His movie trailer baritone and his speech’s knack for sound bites help make him a very effective communicator.
Davis’ government passed two pieces of legislation to facilitate the sale of blue carbon credits.
It would be the first time a country has entered the blue carbon credit market. These credits are purchased by countries and companies to help compensate for their contribution to greenhouse gas emissions. “Blue” carbon credits come from marine sources.
As do-or-die deadlines to lower or offset emissions approach, carbon credits have become a billion-dollar market.
“We as Bahamians should be proud of this piece of legislation. We are international trailblazers, setting the pace, leading the charge,” said Attorney General Ryan Pinder, laying the Climate Change & Carbon Markets Initiatives Bill before the senate last year, and using the triumphant language Davis and members of his administration employ when talking about the project.
They’re better at sequestration, as it’s called, than land-based forests. A hectare of seagrass sequesters as much carbon as 15 hectares of Amazon rainforest
But despite the high-flying words, Davis himself has been honest about the fact that the benefits of the seagrass won’t come quickly and easily.
“There are always inherent unknowns and risks to being the first to do something,” he warned during debate on the Carbon Credit Trading Bill last year.
He admitted that there is “a certain degree of uncertainty” involved in the venture.
The seagrass meadows have to be mapped and their value verified in a process that could take between five and seven years, he said.
“It is a complex and detailed process, and we can initially map and verify about three to four plots a year,” he said.
The mapping and verification process is estimated to cost US$50–$60 million. The company Carbon Management Ltd has been set up to raise the funds and manage the project. It’s a partnership between the Bahamian government and Beneath the Waves, the NGO behind the country’s seagrass research.
At a town hall organised by the Office of the Prime Minister and posted on its YouTube channel, Rochelle Newbold — referred to by the moderator as the administration’s climate change czar — was asked whether The Bahamas, new to the market, can really expect to earn the high level of revenue being suggested is possible. Newbold was blunt.
“In the act, it talks about the validation and verification. Until we do that, all we are doing is speculating,” she said. The government, she said, wants to keep things above board.
“And we wish not to speculate because when we come before the Bahamian people and we say it’s X dollars, we’re going to tell you why it’s X dollars, and you’re going to be able to track those X dollars,” she said.
Addressing concerns about “greenwashing” — companies’ buying carbon credits to claim that they’re doing something about global warming while not trying to lower their emissions — she said: “The Bahamas will not sell credits to individuals who are not doing their part to implement an agenda towards net zero.”
This is a mandate in the new Climate Change & Carbon Markets Initiatives Act, which also mandates the documentation of the emission reductions coming out of every “offset scheme” it facilitates.
Rebuilding shark populations across Caribbean nations will go a long way into protecting its marine resources
Bridget Shayka — co-author of a recently published study that found seagrass in the Caribbean could be worth as much as US$88.3 billion as carbon sinks and US$255 billion a year in “total ecosystem services” — suggested blue carbon credits are a way to make polluters pay.
“This may be a great opportunity for nations or companies that are contributing the most to climate change to financially support the protection of seagrass beds in other countries, such as The Bahamas,” said Shayka via email.
Newbold suggested that putting a dollar value on parts of the environment may help people better appreciate them.
“If we don’t put a value on things, we then don’t have respect for that resource,” she said. “Now that we can put a value on something, that seems to resonate, and lights go off in the heads of everybody globally.”
Beneath the Waves team member Carlos Duarte, who Davis lauded in his bill debate speech as “the leading seagrass scientist in the world”, thinks the risk and uncertainty are to be expected. He, of course, supports the project and the Davis administration’s approach.
“The Bahamians have been sleeping on their seagrass assets since the independence of their nation, and if they have to wait one or a few years, not more, to see their value monetised to the benefit of the country, this should not lead to despair,” he said via email. “In fact, avoiding a gold rush behaviour is fundamental to ensure the project will deliver wealth, not for a few years, but for decades to come and multiple generations of Bahamians.”
The Bahamas has a good environmental protection track record. Duarte’s team surveyed the seagrass meadows off the Bahama Banks by affixing cameras to the fins of tiger sharks. Their study, published last year in the journal Nature Communication, has gotten widespread media attention — not least since the use of sharks was possible because of The Bahamas’ commitment to protecting the environment, including its shark population.
“Bahamas has a thriving shark population as an outcome of the sanctuary established some time ago,” said Duarte. “Tiger sharks are key custodians of healthy seagrass meadows, as their demise can lead to overgrazing by sea turtles and other herbivores, otherwise kept under controlled population levels by tiger sharks,” he said. “Rebuilding shark populations across Caribbean nations will go a long way into protecting its marine resources.”
Duarte thinks ocean stocks depleted by human activity can be replenished by 2050, and that will go a long way towards mitigating the effects of climate change. Efforts like The Bahamas’ would be a key part of this.
“We need more successful projects that can be used as exemplars for other projects, particularly for small island states … more media attention, as that you are bringing through this article, and also governance systems that are ready to support seagrass as a component of the solution to climate change.”
