Royal Society Talk: Restoring Ponds Back to Mangroves

The multiple benefits of restoring disused aquaculture ponds back to mangroves in Indonesia.

‘Blue carbon’ refers to the carbon stored by high productivity marine ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass beds, tidal saltmarshes and kelp forests. Interest in these extremely valuable ecosystems is gaining considerable traction internationally due to their disproportionately high carbon storage and sequestration capabilities in comparison to terrestrial ecosystems such as tropical rainforests.

While they have a vitally important role to play in mitigating the impacts of climate change, in many parts of the world they continue to be destroyed and degraded. For instance, the loss of mangroves throughout South-east Asia has been particularly extensive driven principally through landscape scale conversion to aquaculture ponds, yet such ponds only have a productive life of 3-10 years before abandonment.

These degraded lands generate no economic returns and deprive coastal communities of the vast array of benefits healthy mangroves provide. As a scientist and conservationist, I am interested in how we can turn such unsustainable situations around and attract the support and financial investment necessary for landscape scale rehabilitation. In this presentation, I will examine how forest carbon markets may be one avenue to help finance rehabilitation through exploring a blue carbon case study from Indonesia.

About the Speaker:
Clint is an ecologist and marine scientist at Wildland Consultants Ltd. His key interests are focused on (a) quantifying and valuing changes in the provision of ecosystem services, particularly carbon dynamics associated with coastal and marine ecosystems, and (b) applying these concepts to ecological restoration and conservation initiatives.

Clint has a diverse background in marine and terrestrial science, national and international conservation management, forest carbon project development, and environmental law and planning. He has lived, worked and conducted research in 10 different countries in places as diverse as Fiji, Myanmar, Australia, Indonesia, Thailand, Brazil, New Zealand, the UK and Trinidad and Tobago.