A proverb says, “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.” This is borne out in science, where a collective approach is often the best way to solve a difficult problem.
Case in point: A new research collaborative, the Large-Scale Seagrass Mapping and Management Initiative (LaSMMI), is now working on mapping seagrass meadows along multiple African countries in the Western Indian Ocean.
Seagrass meadows fringe every coastline in the region, from the waters of Lamu County in Kenya, down the East African coast to Maputo in Mozambique, over to the island coastlines of Madagascar, Seychelles, and beyond. Yet despite the prevalence of this crucial ecosystem, the region does not have a unified seagrass map, developed using a single method and field-verified for accuracy. This lack of a standardized map hinders seagrass conservation and management.
Seagrasses offer numerous benefits supporting nature, people, and climate. They’re home to a variety of marine life, an expansive biodiversity that sustains local fisheries and coastal communities. As rooted plants, seagrasses help stabilize shorelines and reduce coastal erosion. They also draw down earth-warming carbon dioxide into their leaves; over time, this carbon gets locked away in ocean sediments, preventing it from being released into the atmosphere and contributing to global temperature rise.
Because of these immense benefits, momentum is growing to bring seagrasses into the spotlight. As part of that effort, The Pew Charitable Trusts began in 2019 to support a highly collaborative research project to map seagrass meadows in Seychelles. This project helped Seychelles implement its ambitious plans to protect seagrass as a nature-based solution, as laid out in the country’s updated nationally determined contribution (NDC) to the Paris Agreement, the landmark international treaty that came out of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference.
Now, Pew is also supporting the LaSMMI, which is expanding the Seychelles mapping project to Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique, and Madagascar. This Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region initiative is led by the University of Oxford, the nonprofit nongovernmental Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA), and several in-country research partners, and has garnered support from regional bodies such as the Nairobi Convention (a multigovernmental treaty agreement administered by the United Nations Environment Programme).
Through partnerships with local research institutions, the project aims to develop ambitious, field-verified national seagrass maps and elevate seagrass ecosystems as a nature-based solution to climate change. The maps themselves should help inform effective conservation and management efforts, including providing countries with robust data that allows them to include seagrass as part of climate mitigation and adaptation targets in their next NDC. Additionally, the project plans to strengthen capacity on seagrass mapping, identification, and policy through targeted training and workshops.
To officially kick-start this initiative, 35 partners and stakeholders attended an inception workshop in Zanzibar in October. Attendees established a common platform for the project, reviewed its goals, and developed a concise roadmap for the timely delivery of the project's objectives. And in the short time since the workshop, researchers have already begun training for initial fieldwork in Madagascar, with plans to continue the process throughout the rest of 2024.
As part of the team working on this project at Pew, we’re excited about the work ahead and the numerous partnerships that have been developed as part of this initiative, which should further strengthen linkages across the seagrass community in the region. We look forward to the continued collaboration to help drive seagrass conservation and management in the Western Indian Ocean.
Stacy Baez is a senior officer and Inês de Portugal Fernandes is a principal associate with The Pew Charitable Trusts’ advancing coastal wetlands conservation project.