The Seascape Carbon Initiative aims to catalyze research on seascape carbon activities, develop carbon crediting methodologies to quantify and verify their impacts, and help drive critical finance to them.
Activities like kelp and seaweed farming, seabed management, sustainable fishing, and conserving and restoring seagrass meadows, salt marshes, and mangroves can reduce or remove from the atmosphere more than one billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually and restore degraded oceans.
In addition to their climate impact, the proposed activities would improve ocean health, increase biodiversity, sustain healthy fisheries, and lower ocean acidification.
The initiative was launched in August 2021 by Silvestrum Climate Associates, Blue Marine Foundation, the Blue Carbon Initiative, and Oceans 2050. Verra will serve as the independent standard-setter for the initiative.
Interested in Participating?
We welcome the participation of others as we advance the work of the Seascape Carbon Initiative. Interested individuals can contact Steve Crooks at seascape@silvestrum.com.
ABOUT THE SEASCAPE CARBON INITIATIVE
The Seascape Carbon Initiative is led by Verra, Silvestrum Climate Associates, Blue Marine Foundation, the Blue Carbon Initiative, and Oceans 2050.
Verra is a global leader helping to tackle the world’s most intractable environmental and social challenges. As a mission-driven non-profit organization, Verra is committed to helping reduce greenhouse gas emissions, improve livelihoods and protect natural resources by working with the private and public sectors. We support climate action and sustainable development with standards, tools and programs that credibly, transparently and robustly assess environmental and social impacts and enable funding for sustaining and scaling up projects that verifiably deliver these benefits. We work in any arena where we see a need for clear standards, a role for market-based mechanisms, and an opportunity to generate significant environmental and social value.
Silvestrum Climate Associates was founded in 2008 in Europe, and expanded to the United States and the San Francisco Bay Area as Silvestrum Climate Associates, LLC in 2016 as a certified woman-owned small business. The Core Team has a long history of collaboration that extends well beyond the tenure of the firm. Together, we address the challenges of climate change by nurturing sustainable development that is grounded in science, action oriented, and community driven. As innovators and long-time practitioners in climate adaptation, climate mitigation, climate change policy, engineering, and environmental science, we unite insights from successful projects and policies from across the world, combining cutting-edge research with decades of hands-on experience.
Blue Marine Foundation (BLUE) exists to restore a healthy ocean by addressing overfishing. Set up in 2010 by the team behind The End of the Line, BLUE creates marine protected areas, develops models of sustainable fishing, confronts unsustainable fishing, restores marine habitats and connects people with the sea. A specialist unit within BLUE focuses on blue carbon, seeking to raise the profile of the ocean as a climate change solution and further develop a transparent and trustworthy voluntary blue carbon market that supports the recovery of biodiversity.
Oceans 2050’s mission is to mobilize a global alliance to restore the world’s marine life to its former abundance by 2050 by enabling and amplifying how people and companies across all sectors can be contributors to a common vision of an abundant future. Founded and led by Alexandra Cousteau together with Chief Scientific Advisor Professor Carlos Duarte, the platform identifies and develops solutions that harness the power of citizens, the private sector and markets to reshape an ocean strategy fit for current and future challenges by producing impact at a scale that is meaningful for the oceans, the climate, and the millions of people that depend on them.
Blue Carbon Initiative is a global program working to mitigate climate change through the restoration and sustainable use of coastal and marine ecosystems. The Initiative currently focuses on mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses. The Blue Carbon Initiative brings together governments, research institutions, non-governmental organizations and communities from around the world. The Initiative is coordinated by Conservation International (CI), the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (IOC-UNESCO).