Experts say this form of carbon offsetting could strengthen the fight against climate change, but it must be used responsibly.
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00:00 The climate crisis is one of the biggest threats facing humanity right now.
00:18 And confronted by such a problem, states and scientists are searching for solutions.
00:25 Some you may have heard of, and others maybe a little more unfamiliar.
00:39 When we talk about blue carbon, we're talking about the carbon captured by coastal and marine
00:44 ecosystems, specifically mangroves, tidal marshes, and seagrass.
00:51 Just like trees on land, these so-called blue forests can absorb and store carbon, but they
00:56 do so at a much faster rate.
00:58 In fact, seagrass can capture this element up to 35 times more quickly than tropical
01:04 rainforests, and it can then be stored for thousands of years.
01:08 The beauty of it is that once it's captured in the plant, we're generally talking about
01:14 the rhizome, so this brown, thick meadow that's underneath the leaves.
01:19 And that's what's holding the vast majority of the carbon.
01:22 So even if the plant would die off, the rhizome is still underground, and it will ideally
01:28 stay there unless somebody's actively pulling it out.
01:32 Manuel Marinelli is sailing around the Mediterranean replanting seagrass meadows.
01:40 This ecosystem is disappearing more and more rapidly because of a number of factors such
01:46 as pollution, coastal development, and destructive fishing practices.
01:52 But what's essential to maximizing conservation efforts?
01:56 Funding.
01:59 This is where blue carbon credits come in.
02:03 Blue carbon credits are emission credits that are generated by restoring and conserving
02:13 blue carbon ecosystems.
02:17 If you're familiar with standard carbon offsetting, we're pretty much talking about the same concept
02:21 here, but it specifically relates to aquatic plants.
02:26 Let's break this down.
02:27 Essentially, companies who want to balance out their polluting emissions can buy credits
02:32 from a third party, often a business that trades in carbon reduction.
02:39 Each credit sold is a promise that the third party will remove a certain amount of carbon
02:43 from the atmosphere.
02:44 For example, this could be done by planting more mangroves.
02:49 Over time, this will theoretically offset the pollution released by the company that
02:55 is paying.
02:58 Some carbon credit markets are labeled mandatory, which means they were created because of legally
03:04 binding emissions targets.
03:06 They function a little differently.
03:09 A regulator, say the government, tells companies they are only allowed to release a certain
03:14 amount of carbon, and therefore grants them a specific amount of credits.
03:18 Then, if the company emits less carbon than expected, it can sell its excess credits to
03:24 other businesses.
03:26 But carbon markets can also be voluntary, like the one outlined earlier.
03:31 Many businesses nonetheless buy these kinds of credits for ethical reasons or to boost
03:35 their public image.
03:39 Catarina Grilo, who works for ANP WWF in Portugal, says that even if a carbon market is voluntary,
03:46 credits should still be vetted.
03:50 What we need is governments, when regulating their voluntary carbon market, to define what
03:55 are the standards that they're allowing to be used within their borders.
04:02 And so not to let everything to the market, basically.
04:08 Manuel also warns that some carbon removal companies are promising unfeasible results.
04:14 We had conversations with companies that actually approached us asking, so how many cigarettes
04:19 plants can you plant in a year?
04:21 Can you do, say, 5,000 plants a week?
04:24 And then we would support you with X amount of money to do whatever amount of planting.
04:30 And while I quite like the idea of getting money in exchange for doing restoration work,
04:37 there is just no way on earth that I could promise to plant a certain amount of cigarettes
04:44 plants in a week, let alone 5,000.
04:48 It's just unreal.
04:50 It's impossible.
04:55 He explains that because of the unpredictability of the natural world, it's also impossible
04:59 to predict how much carbon will be offset.
05:04 I think one thing we have to move away from is the idea of saying, I give you this amount
05:10 of money and you capture this amount of CO2.
05:12 It's just not how the world is working.
05:15 We had heat waves in Mediterranean that were unseen ever before, and we lost entire meadows
05:20 because of water temperatures well above 30 degrees.
05:24 In an effort to combat phony carbon schemes, the European Commission outlined a voluntary
05:29 framework to certify carbon removals in 2022.
05:34 Although it's yet to be finalized, the proposal wants to make the verification of carbon credits
05:39 more thorough.
05:40 The blue carbon market is yet to take off in the EU, but as demand races ahead of supply,
05:46 some experts are predicting a boom.
05:50 The credits could be a powerful tool against climate change, but conservationists say they
05:55 mustn't be misused.
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