Steven Lutz from GRID-Arendal comes on the show to discuss whether whales are or can be carbon-negative, and if and how this could be monetized in carbon markets.
Full Transcript
Ross Kenyon: Hello and welcome to Carbon Removal Newsroom. I’m Ross Kenyon, lead strategist with the Nori Carbon Removal Marketplace. Today I have with me Stephen Lutz, lead of the Blue Carbon Program at Grid Arendelle. Stephen, thanks so much for being here.
Steven Lutz: Thank you very much. It’s great to be here. Looking forward to the discussion.
Ross Kenyon: Me too. We get a lot of people asking for blue carbon content. We haven’t done nearly enough shows about it either here or on reversing climate change. So I’m happy that we were able to connect because I’ve seen a bunch of articles come out recently about whales being carbon negative. I also saw people groaning about whales entering carbon markets and sort of mocking this idea. But maybe starting from the beginning, how exactly are whales carbon negative or could be carbon negative?
Steven Lutz: Okay, so there’s a number of sort of mechanisms whereby whales have roles to play in fixing and sequestering carbon in the oceans or helping to fix and sequester carbon in the oceans. So carbon in the oceans is fixed by phytoplankton. That’s the little algae that live at the surface of the water or the shallow waters. And they do that by bringing excess nutrients into nutrient-deprived waters. And they do that through nutrient-rich flocculent fecal plumes. So they go down to depth and they feed on squid. And then they come up to the surface and they defecate.
And this brings excess nutrients into the surface waters. Or they migrate from nutrient-rich feeding grounds in different latitudes and bring nutrient-rich materials when they come to more tropical or nutrient-poor waters. So that nutrients is actually what the phytoplankton need to grow. And the phytoplankton, when it grows, it takes in carbon from the surrounding waters, thereby helping the ocean’s ability to take up carbon from the atmosphere. Another way the whales help is by storing carbon in their biomass. So some whales are extremely long-lived. And just like us, we’re all carbon-based units or animals, so to speak.
The whales store carbon in their bodies for over their long lifespans. And then the next mechanism is whereby when whales naturally expire, They bring that carbon down to the bottom of the ocean where it can be sequestered or stored away from the atmosphere for thousands to millions of years. So when that carbon in that dead whale gets to the bottom of the ocean, it provides a ton of nutrients to animals that live at the bottom of the ocean. But also that carbon is down there for a long period of time.
And I think with regards to getting carbon out of the atmosphere, I think the longer the better with regard to addressing climate change. And carbon that reaches the deep ocean is out of contact with the atmosphere for thousands to potentially millions of years, especially if the carbon from Wales enters into the geological record by sedimentation at the bottom of the ocean.
Ross Kenyon: Do you have any sense of scale, Stephen, on how many tonnes of carbon dioxide whales might sequester over the course of their lifetime in the deep ocean?
Steven Lutz: I think that the studies on that, we’re only looking at individual species. We’re not looking at all of the great whales yet. So the IMF released an article recently that essentially looks at how If we were returned to the Great Whales to their pre-wailing numbers, it would capture about 1. 7 billion tonnes of carbon annually. And that’s a significant amount.
Ross Kenyon: A surprisingly large amount. What’s the population of whales now relative to the pre-wailing days, percentage-wise? Are we up 10%, 20%? Is it more or less? Yeah.
Steven Lutz: Well, in answer to that question, I would say that the degradation or the culling of whale populations is well documented. For example, sperm whales have been driven down to about one third of their pre-whaling populations and blue whales have been depleted up to 90% of their pre-whaling populations. And the issue here is that whales take a really long time to repopulate. So even though they might be at the fantastic carbon sink, it’s going to take a while for them to recover to these full populations.
Ross Kenyon: Interesting. And I did see people mocking this a bit. Not the idea that whales can be carbon negative, but that there might be some sort of carbon market that monetized whales. This is sort of broadly the criticism of ecosystem service markets is that they put a price on something that’s inappropriate or maybe just economically the incentives work in a wonky kind of way. But do you think actually there is a case for whales entering carbon markets?
Steven Lutz: I think it’s an interesting question. I don’t think we have the information that we need to see if well carbon offsets would be viable yet. I think you’re not going to see well carbon offsets anytime soon because we really have to understand, first, if we can measure this value, its global significance, and then what it would take potentially for a well carbon offset. Is it even feasible? We do have examples in the terrestrial carbon market where coastal ecosystems are being harnessed to achieve goals in climate change with community benefit. But I think a well carbon offset would be a completely different type of an offset.
And I don’t think anybody’s proposed something like that yet. We actually do have some proposals to explore the idea, but we haven’t got funding yet.
Ross Kenyon: This is charismatic megafauna if I’ve ever seen it, Stephen. But it does seem very hard to measure. Yeah.
Steven Lutz: Yeah, but one thing you’ve got to take into account is that, you know, the value of a carbon offset for a well must be, I think it should be something like, how much would it cost to conserve and manage and help restore carbon? The whale population. So it may be that the actual value or the cost of actually protecting whales is more than their value in carbon. But like I said, we don’t have the idea of the numbers yet. But what you could think of is maybe a potential boutique type of carbon offset for people that actually do appreciate whales and like the charismatic megafauna.
I think that could be something popular and I think it’s a question worth exploring.
Ross Kenyon: Yeah, those are all fair points. I guess we’ll have to look forward to seeing what exactly happens with that, if anything. Or maybe it isn’t carbon markets. Maybe that’s just an ancillary benefit to whale conservation generally.
Steven Lutz: And you have to remember that right now at the UN, they’re discussing a treaty for the high seas. That’s the area beyond national jurisdiction. And marine protected areas have been advanced by many non-governmental organizations and supported organizations. In their development by many foundations as well. But what they don’t seem to have is a financial mechanism for sustainably managing these marine protected areas and especially management in the high seas. So maybe whale carbon and the fish carbon could actually give us a way for the sustainable management of these areas. For me, the IMF report was Potentially helps us answer the question of the tragedy of the commons for the ocean.
And the tragedy of the commons is what’s going on in the high seas right now. The tragedy of the commons refers to how ocean life is seen as a common unlimited resource and how its exploitation has led to the destruction of over-harvesting of many fisheries on the high seas and other areas. And this is because in individual self-interests we see it as a common resource so we just take it before someone else does. Now the IMF study advances a non-exploitive Economic value for whales that is supported by them just existing in the ocean.
And this value potentially cancels out the tragedy of the commons for whales. So as far as a whale carbon offset goes, I think this is potentially really good news for whales and potentially hinting at something even more exciting for marine life.
Ross Kenyon: The IMF talking about whales and blue carbon seems like a big deal. And also, I think I’ve just seen more blue carbon stuff lately than I have previously. Do you think things are moving along at a nice trot right now with blue carbon? Is there stuff that we should be keeping our eyes peeled for?
Steven Lutz: Well, you know, blue carbon is carbon that is stored and sequestered by coastal and marine ecosystems. And, you know, the focus of most of blue carbon has been on these coastal ecosystems, the mangrove forests, the seagrass meadows and the saltwater marshlands. And coastal blue carbon makes a really good scientific question because scientists can go out there, they can stick a core in the ground, they can get that sediment sample and then they can measure it and say, wow, look at all that carbon. And that’s great. So it’s been a great scientific question.
But one thing that we haven’t answered yet is if the value of coastal blue carbon can achieve significant goals in climate change. And addressing climate change and supporting sustainable communities. Because we don’t have that many projects out there that actually demonstrate that yet. So I’d say coastal blue carbon has still been a great scientific question, but the jury’s still out on if it’s going to be able to be harnessed to achieve these goals for communities and for countries. Now that being said, I manage the Blue Forest Project on behalf of the United Nations Environment Programme.
And this is essentially the world’s largest exploration of blue carbon and ecosystem services for coastal and marine ecosystems. We have project sites across the world and just this year, We’ve actually been able to increase the area of mangrove forests on the voluntary carbon market by an order of magnitude. So just a few years, we started with a small project in Gazi Bay, Kenya called Mikoko Pomoja. Where 107 hectares of mangrove forests on the voluntary carbon market has supported mangrove conservation and reforestation activities and community benefit activities such as the building of freshwater wells and the buying of school books for local children.
And it’s done that through payments on the voluntary carbon market. And just this year we’ve been able to increase the area From 107 hectares to over 3,500 hectares with other projects in Kenya and in Madagascar. So this to me is an exciting positive step forward for coastal blue carbon. Additionally, many countries are actually taking notes of the value of these ecosystems in climate change adaptation and mitigation. So mangrove forests, for example, store up to 10 times as much carbon as terrestrial forests. So even though they occupy a tiny sliver of area around the coastlines, they’re actually quite important in our fight against climate change.
So countries are actually including these ecosystems in actions in their national pledges to fulfill the Paris Climate Agreement. And to date, I think it’s 30 countries include reference to coastal wetlands and coastal ecosystems in terms of mitigation actions in these national pledges. And 59 countries include these ecosystems in terms of adaptation strategies. And these are pledges that countries are actually making to the UNFCCC. So I think blue carbon is just going to grow, the importance of it on the coasts and the importance of it in the oceans as well.
Ross Kenyon: We’re very excited about blue carbon and aquaculture and just generally figuring out how to involve carbon removal in the littoral and pelagic seas or waterways, I should say. That was just me showing off that I wanted to know some nautical terminology. But the company is called Nori. We think there’s a lot of potential out there in the ocean and we’re tracking this closely. So thanks for your work on all that, Stephen.
Steven Lutz: Sure.
Ross Kenyon: And if someone wanted to follow your work, if they wanted to keep up on the state of blue carbon, what do you think might be a good way for them to do so?
Steven Lutz: Well, you could look at what we’re doing through the Blue Forest Project. That’s pretty easy to find online. Or look at our program at Grid Arendelle. And there’s many other initiatives out there. The Blue Carbon Initiative is one that’s managed by Conservation International and other partners. And then for more international sort of flair to it, you could look at the International Partnership for Blue Carbon that we’re a founding member of.
Ross Kenyon: Great. I’ll put those links in the show notes for anyone who would like to follow up and learn more. I’ll also just try to program more of these for both Carbon Removal Newsroom and for reversing climate change. Well, thank you for being here with me, Stephen. That was fun and learned a lot. And you’ve given me some hope for the sector.
Steven Lutz: Yeah, thank you. Thank you very much.
Unknown speaker: My pleasure. Great. Thanks.
Ross Kenyon: And if you like the show, please rate and review us on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, or Stitcher. Tell your friends. Tell a friend who needs to know that Blue Carbon out there is going on in very exciting ways. Help us get the word out. And thank you so much for listening.
