It is becoming increasing obvious to everyone that climate change is a subject that can no longer be ignored, both individuals and companies are going to have to take responsibility for their actions. As such we all need to play our part in helping to reduce the causes and mitigate the effects of a warming world, in particular reducing CO2 emissions. Blue carbon sequestration in seagrass meadows could be a powerful, low risk nature-based solution to help off-set carbon emissions as it is believed that seagrasses can absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere up to 35 times faster than tropical rain forests making it a powerful tool in the fight against climate change.
The Hong Kong Seagrass Restoration Association has been set up to help further the scientific basis for understanding how seagrasses sequester carbon through the process of restoring and replanting up to 6 hectares of seagrass meadows around Hong Kong waters. If successful this initiative should help to restore sensitive ecological systems in Hong Kong to promote biodiversity, it will reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere and, increase the scientific knowledge on restoring seagrass meadows in Hong Kong that can hopefully be used to help replant much larger areas of seagrass meadows across the whole of South China coastline in future.