Center for Coastal & Marine Studies
BLUE CARBON HANDBOOK: NATURE-BASED SOLUTIONS FOR CLIMATE ACTION AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT
With the urgent need for accelerated climate action to halt the worst impacts of climate change, the world’s coastlines offer a natural solution in ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems that can have an immediate impact.
Blue carbon ecosystems such as mangrove forests, seagrass beds and tidal marshes are vital natural assets. Their importance in helping to mitigate climate change is, on its own, a strong argument for their active protection and conservation. Yet, these ecosystems also provide a myriad of other local and global benefits such as enhancing biodiversity, supporting the food and economic security of coastal communities, and buffering and protecting coasts from erosion and flooding, reinforcing their wider importance for sustainable development.
While global interest in blue carbon is rising, the full potential of this nature-based solution for delivering on the ambitions of the Paris Agreement, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, and a sustainable ocean economy is not yet being realised. Meanwhile these ecosystems continue to be destroyed and degraded worldwide.
A new WWF assessment of MSP in the EU Mediterranean published!
National maritime plans are misaligned within and across borders, fail to account for climate change, and are off track to achieve renewable energy and marine protection targets.
A new WWF assessment of maritime spatial planning (MSP) in the EU Mediterranean reveals the region is significantly lagging behind in applying an ecosystem-based approach to the long-term management of the basin.
CCMS team at the MSP-GREEN Workshop in Turku, Finland, 19-20 June 2023
MSP-GREEN project experts from the coasts of all European sea basins have gathered in a exchanging Workshop in Turku, Finland on 19-20 June 2023, to actively discuss how the MSP enables the European Green Deal (EGD) in their countries.
The main topic of the Workshop was to exchanging results from the analysis of the EGD component of the national MSP plans in partner countries under the MSP-GREEN project (Maritime Spatial Planning as enabler of the European Green Deal), co-financed by the European Maritime, Fisheries and Aquaculture Fund of European Union, Grant Agreement: 101081314 - MSP-GREEN - EMFAF-2021-PIA-MSP. The Workshop was organized by the MSP-GREEN partner, Regional Council of Southwest Finland (RCSW FI).
During the workshop, CCMS team presented the main results from the analysis (desk-based and interviews) on the EGD elements integration in the Bulgarian MSP Plan and took an active part in the working meeting and the discussions held.
Stay tuned for further information and details on the MSP-GREEN progress and results via the website and social media:
https://mspgreen.eu/
https://twitter.com/MSPGREEN22
OCEAN SAND: PUTTING SAND ON THE OCEAN SUSTAINABILITY AGENDA – Ocean Risk and Resilience Action Alliance (ORRAA) Report published
Sand in the ocean ecosystem. The marine and coastal environment is both a sink for sand delivered from rivers and an active source of sand, continuously subject to erosional and depositional processes, longshore currents, tides, waves and bio-erosion. Naturally-occurring sand acts as both a connector and a buffer at the land-sea interface, functionally linking the marine and terrestrial ecosystems while protecting the land and stabilizing the coastline in what is generally considered one of the most costeffective climate mitigation strategies to enhance coastal resilience. It underpins island morphology, shapes the seabed, controls coastal erosion, offers essential nutrients and maintains biodiversity through the formation of sand bars, beaches, dunes and other coastal landforms that support highly specialized biotic assemblages and provide habitat for a wide variety of species.