Mangrove and Seagrass Mapping Informs Jamaica’s Climate Policy

Seagrass meadows, mangrove forests, and salt marshes—all types of coastal wetlands—are the only marine ecosystems that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change officially recognizes as helping governments to meet their climate change mitigation reporting commitments. In addition, mangroves and seagrass beds protect communities from flooding caused by storm surges, help to limit erosion, and provide nursery and breeding grounds for important fish species. Jamaica is one country seeing the benefits of coastal wetlands as nature-based solutions to climate change. In 2017, Jamaica ratified the Paris Agreement, the landmark international treaty that came out of the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, and the country submitted its first required nationally determined contribution (NDC) to show how it intends to meet the goals of the treaty. Jamaica will submit an updated NDC in 2025, which, because of the Paris Agreement’s ratcheting mechanism, is expected to include more ambitious climate targets, such as mangrove and seagrass conservation.

How can coastal wetland science inform climate policy?

In advance of submitting that updated NDC, Jamaica is improving its mapping of seagrass beds and mangroves and its carbon stock estimates for these ecosystems. Information on the status and extent of seagrass and mangroves, along with carbon stock data, is crucial to advancing conservation efforts and could help support the inclusion of these ecosystems in Jamaica’s updated NDC.

Camilo Trench University of the West Indies

The Pew Charitable Trusts is supporting a project by The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the Centre for Marine Sciences at the University of the West Indies (UWI) to carry out these mapping and carbon stock efforts. This data will then be provided to the Jamaican government to inform policy and management decisions. The project also seeks to engage with key stakeholders—such as nongovernmental organizations (which steward protected areas and manage fish sanctuaries), researchers, private sector environmental consultants, and government officials—to build support for the inclusion of coastal wetlands in Jamaica’s international climate commitments, including NDCs.

“The Nature Conservancy is pleased to be providing technical support to the government of Jamaica as it seeks to update its nationally determined contributions,” said Donna Oniss-Blake, Jamaica program director for The Nature Conservancy.  “The outcomes of this project include providing updated information on the spatial extent of mangrove forests and seagrass beds, which form part of Jamaica’s blue carbon ecosystems. It is envisioned that this scientific information can be incorporated into Jamaica’s process for updating its nationally determined contributions.

Mapping workshop and project launch

TNC Jamaica, in collaboration with UWI’s Centre for Marine Sciences, hosted a workshop April 17-18 with participants from government agencies responsible for climate policy, forestry, fisheries, and coastal management, along with representatives from academia, coastal marine experts from non-governmental organizations, and private sector environmental consultants.

The Pew Charitable Trusts

The goal of the workshop was to gather feedback from local partners of the proposed mangrove and seagrass mapping research and discuss how the data could be used to inform policy. In addition, the workshop attendees worked with the joint TNC and UWI research team to help identify sampling locations for the mapping work.

University of the West Indies Centre for Marine Sciences

This participatory process should help ensure the accuracy and usefulness of the data to be collected while allowing the research team to incorporate valuable local expertise and knowledge into the project. Already, participants’ feedback at the workshop helped TNC and UWI create a comprehensive research plan for their field work.

“The Centre for Marine Sciences at the University of the West Indies Mona campus is pleased to be collaborating with our project partners by providing field-based carbon storage assessments of representative mangroves and seagrasses around the island of Jamaica,” said professor Mona Webber, head of the Department of Life Sciences at UWI’s Mona campus. “The combination of carbon data [determined using internationally accepted methods] with updated maps should assist Jamaica to include blue carbon stocks as part of its nationally determined contributions.”

Outcomes from the successful workshop will not only feed into Jamaica’s decision to protect its blue carbon coastal ecosystems in its 2025 updated NDC, but it also will help ensure that the country’s mangroves and seagrass remain healthy and intact so that they can continue to provide climate benefits.

Peter Edwards works on The Pew Charitable Trusts’ conservation science program.