16 December 2015: The Coastal Blue Carbon Counter, a real-time display that visualized the amount of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) being sequestered by coastal ecosystems worldwide during the 21st session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 21) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), is now available on the Internet.

Jointly developed by The Nature Conservancy’s Mapping Ocean Wealth Project, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), and GRID-Arendal, a centre collaborating with the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the counter aims to visualize how much carbon is being sequestered by natural ecosystems, compared to the amount being released back into the atmosphere when such ecosystems are destroyed.

Launched on 30 November 2015, coinciding with the beginning of COP 21, the counter displays in real time how much CO2e has been sequestered since the start of COP 21 by mangroves, salt marches, and seagrass habitats around the world. As of 16 December 2015, 17 days after the counter’s launch, a total of 15.2 million tons CO2e had been sequestered. This count is compared to the total amount of CO2e that was sequestered by these habitats between 1990 and the start of COP 21 (totaling 9,649 billion tons CO2e) and the amount of CO2e released back into the atmosphere by the destruction of such habitats over the same time period (totaling 12.399 billion tons of CO2e).

The Blue Carbon Counter can be accessed on the website of GRID-Arendal. [Coastal Blue Carbon Counter] [GRID-Arendal Press Release] [The Nature Conservancy – Mapping Ocean Wealth]