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Making Nature Work for Climate Change Action

Tiina Kurvits, Blue Forests

By Blue Forests Project

January 24^th, 2017

The Blue Forest cross-training workshop

The Global Environment Facility (GEF)/UN Environment (UNEP) Blue Forests Project Cross-Training Workshop is taking place in Panama City, from 23 to 25 January 2017.

"Blue forests" refers to coastal and marine ecosystems, and include mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and saltwater marshes. These ecosystems are important for storing and sequestering significant amounts of atmospheric carbon ("blue carbon") thus helping address the global climate challenge. In addition, they help support coastal and island communities around the world by providing essential ecosystem services such as shoreline protection and fish habitat.

"Latin America and the Caribbean counts with some of the most extensive and productive blue forests in the world. They provide livelihoods for millions of people in the hemisphere and a natural nursing home to hundreds of species, some of which form the basis of commercial fisheries in the region", states Alberto Pacheco Capella, Regional Coordinator for Ecosystem Management Sub-Programme, UN Environment."

The Blue Forests cross-training workshop will bring together international researchers and practitioners, regional policymakers, and academics to develop a more mature approach to blue forests and blue carbon projects. It aims to provide specific guidance to the UN Environment and its partners for follow-up work in the Latin America and Caribbean. The workshop will produce a white paper that is intended to serve as the basis for stimulating blue forests/blue carbon projects within the region. Participants include representatives of the GEF Blue Forests small-scale intervention sites in Ecuador, Madagascar and United Arab Emirates, as well as government representatives from Panama, the Dominican Republic, and Cuba.

"The GEF Blue Forest workshop in Panama is an encouraging sign that blue forests are becoming part of the equation as countries in the region, and globally, transition towards a more integrated approach to development and the attainment of the sustainable development goals. These changes are coming due to the fact that previously unmeasured or accounted values from blue forest are beginning to be understood by policy makers and the correlation between productive marine and coastal ecosystems and socio-economic development grows stronger," says Alberto Pacheco Capella."

The workshop is hosted by the UN Environment Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNEP-ROLAC), the RAMSAR Regional Center for Training Research on Wetlands in the Western Hemisphere (CREHO) and GRID-Arendal.