In this year of climate action for the UK, and in the run-up to COP26 in Glasgow this November, Plan Vivo are delighted to announce the launch of a new webinar series. The webinars will link to the key COP themes of Adaptation & Resilience and Nature-Based Solutions, both of which are also central to the Plan Vivo model.
Our first webinar will focus on Blue Carbon – the amount of carbon stored and sequestered in coastal habitats like mangroves, salt marshes and seagrass. Plan Vivo is proud of our long association with Mikoko Pamoja, a community-led mangrove conservation and restoration project based in southern Kenya, and the world’s first blue carbon project. We are also proud to welcome our recently-registered Blue Carbon projects Tahiry Honko and Vanga Blue Forest. As these projects exemplify, there is huge potential from Blue Carbon due to its effectiveness at storing carbon, up to five times more than terrestrial forests per hectare. There are also several challenges with Blue Carbon projects, including social, political, and economic. However, when these challenges are addressed well in the project design phase, it can lead to the creation of sustainable livelihoods and the preservation of important coastal habitats, alongside the carbon benefits.
Programme
- Welcome by Plan Vivo Foundation
Keith Bohannon, Chief Operating Officer at Plan Vivo Foundation - The Opportunities and Challenges of Blue Carbon
Prof Mark Huxham - Introduction: Establishing the Fair Carbon Platform
Mark Beeston, from Gallifrey Foundation, will present the report Blue Carbon: Mind the Gap published in October 2020 and discuss the process of establishing the Fair Carbon platform. - Panel: The potential of mangroves as a climate change solution
Prof Mark Huxham, Professor at the University of Napier and an expert on Blue Carbon, will lead the panel discussion on the potential of mangroves as a climate change solution. Mark has developed two projects community-led mangrove conservation and restoration project which are registered under the Plan Vivo Standard: Mikoko Pamoja and Vanga Blue Forest based in southern Kenya. The panellists will be:- Robyn Shilland – Researcher at Edinburgh Napier University. Together with Mark Huxham, Robyn has been leading a NERC-funded research project on how projects can inform the NDCs on blue carbon.
- Leah Glass – Project Coordinator of the Tahiry Honko project in Madagascar, is helping to tackle climate breakdown and build community resilience by preserving and restoring mangrove forests in southwest Madagascar.
- Dr Ryan Merrill – Executive secretary, and co-founder of the Global Mangrove Trust, serves a community of pioneers working to democratise blue carbon sequestration. A Singaporean non-profit, GMT’s primary activity involves building high-scaling funding solutions for community-based mangrove forestry.
- Dr Blanca Bernal – Program Officer at Winrock International and member of the Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) of Plan Vivo. Blanca is a wetland biogeochemist, experienced in carbon accounting and calculation of emission factors associated with land use and land-use change.