Na­ture has unique, al­most mys­ti­cal ways of heal­ing and pre­serv­ing it­self. For mil­lions of years, the del­i­cate bal­ance of na­ture has been up­held by nu­mer­ous nat­ur­al process­es that keep our ecosys­tems in an in­tri­cate but frag­ile dance with one an­oth­er. Of course, hu­man in­volve­ment and al­ter­ation have shift­ed these process­es.

Our ac­tions have led to a gen­er­al im­bal­ance across the plan­et, cli­mate change be­ing one of the most ob­vi­ous re­sults. As dis­mal as that might seem, the nat­ur­al process­es that we have at our dis­pos­al have not been com­plete­ly erased, and many sci­en­tists and lob­by groups are work­ing to utilise the gifts of the earth’s re­silience. Man­groves are one of the earth's most use­ful tools.

Tow­er­ing prop roots, an ar­ray of in­cred­i­ble bio­di­ver­si­ty and mind-bog­gling­ly dense net­works of branch­es and roots that pro­tect us from the worst ef­fects of storms…our man­groves are mon­u­ments to the earth’s de­sign. An In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs team ex­plained why in their quest to im­prove cli­mate change mit­i­ga­tion strate­gies, they are tak­ing their re­search un­der­ground, deep in­to the man­grove soils.

There is no sil­ver bul­let when it comes to cli­mate change. We need to in­ves­ti­gate all pos­si­bil­i­ties and that means not just find­ing ways to re­duce emis­sions but al­so ex­plor­ing meth­ods to re­move and keep car­bon out of the at­mos­phere. Find­ing cre­ative strate­gies to com­bat cli­mate change means study­ing and har­ness­ing the full po­ten­tial of the al­ready ex­ist­ing so­lu­tions in our nat­ur­al en­vi­ron­ment. One of these is Bi­o­log­i­cal Car­bon Se­ques­tra­tion. Hamish As­math, GIS Of­fi­cer of the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs ex­plained, “As trees grow they ab­sorb car­bon from the at­mos­phere. They in­cor­po­rate this in­to their leaves and in­to their woody tis­sues. When all this or­gan­ic mat­ter falls or dies, it falls on­to the sur­face of the man­grove soils. All the prop roots trap that car­bon and do not al­low it to get dis­persed. There is a very fine ma­trix of roots - very fi­brous roots - which help to hold all of this or­gan­ic mat­ter and car­bon in the soil and that car­bon de­com­pos­es in­to the soil. As the or­gan­ic mat­ter breaks down, car­bon is in­cor­po­rat­ed in­to the soil. In ad­di­tion, be­cause they ex­ist in es­tu­ar­ine en­vi­ron­ments, which are very high in silts and clays, the car­bon is eas­i­ly trapped.”

This re­search is part of the Man­grove Soil Car­bon As­sess­ment Project. This is a re­gion­al project in­volv­ing T&T, Guyana and Suri­name fund­ed by the British High Com­mis­sion which will give us the first mea­sure­ments in man­grove soil car­bon for these coun­tries in­volved. Car­bon diox­ide is one of the main dri­vers of cli­mate change and man­grove soils ac­tu­al­ly store four to 20 times as much car­bon as the trees that are above them. In fact, man­grove soils ac­tu­al­ly store many times the amount of car­bon as reg­u­lar forests. As­math elab­o­rat­ed fur­ther on the re­search process, “What we are work­ing on is try­ing to find the best lo­ca­tion where we can take a soil core. We need to get down to at least a me­tre in depth,” he stat­ed. “When we get back from the field, we take the wet weight of the sam­ples. They are then placed in the oven at 60 de­grees Cel­sius for three to five days. At that point they are com­plete­ly and thor­ough­ly dried and then we take the dry weight. The dry weight and the vol­ume of the sam­ple is used to cal­cu­late the bulk den­si­ty which is an es­sen­tial com­po­nent when we are cal­cu­lat­ing the to­tal amount of car­bon in the man­grove soils. When we mul­ti­ply the bulk den­si­ty by the car­bon per­cent­age, we get the to­tal amount of car­bon in that sam­ple.” These car­bon pro­files for the var­i­ous soil sam­ples are used to cal­cu­late the to­tal car­bon stored in each study area. The re­search is ro­bust and they are test­ing the ef­fects of dif­fer­ent pa­ra­me­ters on stored car­bon. They test sites with Red man­groves ver­sus Black man­groves ver­sus re­plant­ed sites and many more.

How is this re­search use­ful in com­bat­ing and un­der­stand­ing cli­mate change? Dr Ra­han­na Ju­man, Di­rec­tor (Ag.) of IMA and wet­lands ex­pert ex­plained the sig­nif­i­cance of the re­search: “The im­por­tance of the study is un­der­stand­ing how much car­bon is stored and this helps in terms of how we can use this in­for­ma­tion, how we can mon­e­tise this in­for­ma­tion. There are ini­tia­tives un­der the Unit­ed Na­tions Frame­work Con­ven­tion on Cli­mate Change - we talked about REDD+ which is Re­duc­ing Emis­sions from De­for­esta­tion and For­est Degra­da­tion in De­vel­op­ing Coun­tries and man­groves are to be in­clud­ed un­der this project and look­ing at an ini­tia­tive like this where we can ac­tu­al­ly re­ceive pay­ments to pre­serve our man­grove for­est in a rel­a­tive­ly pris­tine state or to re­ha­bil­i­tate de­grad­ed ecosys­tems so that they can con­tin­ue to store the car­bon. Coun­tries in the Caribbean can al­so even­tu­al­ly par­tic­i­pate in car­bon trad­ing mar­kets which are rel­a­tive­ly new mar­kets and they’re still work­ing out the mech­a­nism by which the car­bon is go­ing to be mon­e­tized but by hav­ing ro­bust da­ta on the amount of car­bon that is ac­tu­al­ly stored in our man­grove for­est - both in the bio­mass and in the sed­i­ment, we are sort of proac­tive and wait­ing so that when that op­por­tu­ni­ty comes along, we can be en­gaged in car­bon trad­ing in these in­ter­na­tion­al mar­kets and this will help us to pre­serve our man­grove for­est.”

It doesn’t end at just help­ing di­rect con­ser­va­tion ef­forts and be­ing proac­tive about fu­ture op­por­tu­ni­ties, Dr Ju­man al­so said that this da­ta, which will be pub­licly avail­able, can be used by cur­rent net emit­ter com­pa­nies con­sid­er­ing man­grove restora­tion to off­set some emis­sions and by pol­i­cy mak­ers to sup­port ev­i­dence-based de­ci­sion mak­ing. Re­search like this is not on­ly an in­te­gral part of Theme V of vi­sion 2030 Plac­ing the En­vi­ron­ment at the Cen­tre of So­cial and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment but it al­so sup­ports our na­tion­al com­mit­ment to glob­al ef­forts like the Paris Agree­ment and the Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment Goals par­tic­u­lar­ly Goal 13 - Cli­mate Ac­tion.

More than ever, the in­ter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty needs to co­op­er­ate on cli­mate ac­tion. While this re­search was spear­head­ed by the IMA, it is hap­pen­ing in col­lab­o­ra­tion with oth­er Caribbean re­searchers, uni­ver­si­ties and gov­ern­ment bod­ies and was fund­ed by the British High Com­mis­sion. Her Ex­cel­len­cy Har­ri­et Cross, British High Com­mis­sion­er to Trinidad and To­ba­go spoke on the val­ue of work­ing to­geth­er to fa­cil­i­tate projects like these, “The rea­son is sim­ple and the sci­ence is clear,” she said, “cli­mate change is a dead­ly threat to hu­man­i­ty. We must ur­gent­ly scale up ac­tion to have a chance of lim­it­ing warm­ing to 1.5 de­grees Cel­sius. T&T is a small is­land de­vel­op­ing state; the UK recog­nis­es how dev­as­tat­ing changes to cli­mate can be to this coun­try, this is why over the past five years we’ve been work­ing close­ly with part­ners in gov­ern­ment, busi­ness, acad­e­mia, civ­il so­ci­ety to grow a great pri­ori­ti­sa­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment.” Her Ex­cel­len­cy con­tin­ued, “our lat­est project with the In­sti­tute of Ma­rine Af­fairs built on work done with Pro­fes­sor John Agard and the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies about car­bon se­ques­tra­tion in man­groves, this re­cent project shows the im­por­tance of en­sur­ing we are col­lect­ing the right da­ta to make in­formed choic­es. In­for­ma­tion on car­bon se­questered in the above and be­low ground man­grove soils will be im­por­tant as Trinidad and To­ba­go works to achieve its Na­tion­al­ly De­ter­mined Con­tri­bu­tions (ND­Cs) and ful­fil com­mit­ments to the UN Sus­tain­able Goals. Projects like this help us be am­bi­tious, meet the Paris Agree­ment Goals, sup­port stronger na­tion­al ac­tion and stronger in­ter­na­tion­al col­lab­o­ra­tion all of which is need­ed to tack­le cli­mate change and pro­tect cur­rent and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions.”

Our man­groves are tru­ly in­cred­i­ble. They are one of the most pro­duc­tive ecosys­tems on earth but in our re­gion un­til re­cent­ly, they are al­so one of the least stud­ied and least un­der­stood. Thanks to the re­searchers at the IMA and their col­lab­o­ra­tors and their lit­er­al­ly ground-break­ing re­search, we’re fi­nal­ly be­gin­ning to un­der­stand the true val­ue that these amaz­ing forests hold.

To learn more about this project and oth­er en­vi­ron­men­tal ini­tia­tives from the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment and the IMA fol­low us on so­cial me­dia @plan­ningtt and @imagovtt.