Add coastal vegetation to the climate critical list

摘要

My country, Brazil, is home to 80% of the remaining Amazon rainforest, and has rightly worked to find ways to sustainably manage and commercialize these stocks of forest carbon. However, like most countries with long coastlines, Brazil has so far missed the opportunity to value and protect another important carbon store: its mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes. The 9,000-kilometre vibrant and productive Brazilian coastline is covered with vegetated ecosystems that together contain hundreds of millions of tonnes of such carbon, at least. Brazil is home to the third-largest mangrove area in the world and has more than 20,000 hectares of seagrasses near tropical reefs and in coastal lagoons.