Blue Forest Rebuild

Blue forests are one of the most biodiverse marine ecosystems and the most intense carbon sinks in the biosphere. Blue forests are coastal marine ecosystems such as mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and saltmarshes.

These blue carbon ecosystems are essential and indispensable to efficiently counteract climate change through both mitigation and adaptation, since they also play a key role in coastal protection. But we have already lost 30-50% of their global extent. Thus, conserving and restoring our blue forests, as important carbon ecosystems, provides a fundamental pathway for climate action while generating multiple co-benefits, like protecting the shoreline, supporting productive food webs and improving water quality.

If we want to recover the blue forests of our oceans, we must change from passive management measures to active rebuilding intervention. Only mangrove restoration projects have been done on a larger scale, but not the restoration of seagrass meadows and saltmarshes, with a focus on long-term goals. Mangroves and saltmarshes have been mapped globally and priority areas identified, but this does not apply to seagrass meadows.