Mangroves and climate change: prospects and challenges in blue carbon governance in the Philippines

The Professorial Lecture is entitled Mangroves and Climate Change: Prospects and Challenges in Blue Carbon Governance in the Philippines. It presents the role of mangroves in climate change mitigation, and the prospects and challenges of pursuing community-based blue carbon program in the Philippines. Specifically, the topic endeavours to: 1) describe importance of mangroves as blue carbon ecosystem; 2) illustrate the trend and drivers of mangrove cover change in the Philippines; 3) describe the blue carbon stock capacity of Philippine mangroves; 4) describe how mangroves are included in carbon offset mechanisms; 5) explain the major considerations in mangrove governance to support blue carbon program; and 6) recommend strategies in pursuing community-based blue carbon offset project. The Lecture Paper has seven parts. The first three chapters deals with the basic definitions and concepts of mangrove forest, mangrove-related policies and blue carbon. These chapters also highlighted the importance of pursuing mangrove conservation vis-a-vis the different ecosystem services that they provide. Status and trends of mangrove in the Philippines and Southeast Asia were also discussed. Records suggest that despite the massive rehabilitation efforts over the past decade, mangrove deforestation remains a critical concern. Major anthropogenic drivers of mangrove degradation were found to be very much linked to land use conversion to favor food production such as aquaculture and farming. Further, the conversion of mangrove to oil palm plantation was noted to be an emerging cause of coastal deforestation. Mangrove degradation equates to ecosystem services loss, particularly carbon storage and sequestration. Chapter Four talks about the blue carbon potential of Philippine mangroves. Blue carbon estimates from two community-managed mangrove sites were presented, namely: 1) San Juan, Batangas; and 2) Banacon, Island, Bohol were presented. The community-managed mangrove stands of San Juan were found to have two distinct floristic zones: old growth Rhizophora-dominated stands along river banks; and old growth mixed-species stands at shallow inundated mudflats. Their carbon stocks accounts to about 115tC/ha and 142 tC/ha, respectively. These services have an economic value of about US$ 2,954/ha and US$ 3,648/ha. On the other hand, Banacon Island mangrove forest is predominantly a monoculture or 'one-species' stand. Carbon stocks of plantations amounts to 370 tC/ha, while strips of naturally growing Avicennia and Sonneratia-dominated stands contain at least 145 tC/ha. The carbonstocks of these stands have equivalent price of at least US$ 9,500 tC/ha and US$ 3,725 tC/ha, respectively. Given the economically valuable blue carbon, forest conservation needs to be seriously promoted, and opportunities for developing carbon offset project should be explored. Pursuing carbon offset projects needs to conform to policies and platforms that exist in the international climate change agreements. Chapter Five describes how attempts, setbacks and progress to incorporated wetlands (including mangrove forest) in various climate change agreements had been over the past two decades. Despite the growing evidences that confirm the role of coastal ecosystem's as powerhouse of climate change mitigation, blue carbon has not yet been fully included in the current international climate change frameworks. Such limitation necessitates more efforts to develop accurate methods in blue carbon assessment particularly in conformity with the Land Use, Land Use Change and Forestry (LULUCF) framework. Achieving this will qualify mangrove protection and reforestation activities in carbon trading mechanisms particularly Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) and Reducing Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD Plus). Chapter Six provides a number of domestic governance challenges that also impede blue carbon offset programs to become a beneficial endeavour for the local communities. These include: 1) unclear tenurial rights; 2) wrong motivation for reforestation; 3) species-site mismatch; and 4) poor coastal management planning. In response to abovementioned challenges, Chapter Seven finally identifies a number of recommendations on how blue carbon conservation can be promoted. First, there is a need to revisit (and improve if necessary) policies and programs that affects tenurial rights over access and responsibilities over management of mangrove forests. Such action could enhance local commitment and strengthen the sense local ownership over community-based mangrove management programs. Second, non-extractive livelihoods should be explored as potential income source for local communities or stakeholder who have committed to conserving mangroves. These include tourism enterprise and payments for ecosystem services (PES) projects. Lastly, there is need to fast-track the inclusion of mangroves in the international climate change agreements by: forging more collaborative research work on blue carbon stock assessment; developing methodologies for accurate carbon accounting; and reporting of estimates (particularly through scientific publication) to strengthen the evidence-based climate change mitigation role of mangroves.