Seagrass sequestration

The report outlines how seagrass meadows, mangroves and salt marshes have a much greater capacity to trap carbon than land carbon sinks, potentially storing 50 times the amount of carbon that tropical forests do on a per-hectare basis.

These revelations have led the IUCN to believe that ocean ecosystems are essential to combating global warming, said Dr Hilary Kennedy from Bangor University’s School of Ocean Sciences.

While the role of forests and peatlands in carbon sequestration has been relatively well documented, surprisingly little has been made of the role that coastal habitats play in storing carbon.

Kennedy said: ‘Although seagrass meadows cover a relatively small portion of the ocean (around one per cent), they constitute an important carbon sink, responsible for about 15 per cent of the total carbon storage.’

At the recent Copenhagen Climate Change Conference, Carl Gustaf Lundin, head of the IUCN’s Global Marine Programme, also drew attention to the capacity for coastal environments to lock away carbon for thousands of years.