Browsing by Author "Pendleton, Linwood"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8

Open Access
Basurto's Final Word
(ICES Journal of Marine Science, 2017-08-31) Basurto, X
Open Access
Counterpoint to Obura
(ICES Journal of Marine Science, 2018-05-01) Basurto, Xavier
Open Access
Creating a Toolkit for Implementing Blue Carbon Projects
(2016-04-28) He, Xie; Hernandez, Connie; Lamb, Emily; Gutierrez Sepulveda, Tatiana; Schwaner, Caroline
Blue Carbon is a relatively new term, used to refer to the biological processes by which carbon is stored in coastal ecosystems. There has been a rapid expansion of the literature about blue carbon, particularly as it relates to climate change mitigation activities. The experience of initial blue carbon projects highlighted the need for a centralized source of information. In response our client, LabEX Mer, asked our group to create a toolkit that would be readily accessible to project managers with a broad array of institutional capacities. The toolkit aims to help project managers sort through the available information quickly and effectively. We chose to use an open-source Google Drive as the platform for our toolkit. Our decisions were informed by the work of two of our team members who travelled to Ecuador to conduct fieldwork and input from our client. Summary analyses about blue carbon policy and markets were also created.
Open Access
Developing a Framework for Blue Carbon Payments
(2014-04-25) Barnes, Niles
Referred to collectively as ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems, salt marshes, seagrasses and mangroves sequester and store significant amounts of carbon which, when destroyed or degraded, release CO2 into the atmosphere contributing to climate change. The long term sustainable future of these ecosystems may rely in part, on the development of a framework to aid in the process of acquiring payments to protect and restore these ecosystems. Blue carbon ecosystems provide numerous values, services and benefits to humans; however, many of the services are not traded in a marketplace and are unvalued, which has led to overutilization and exploitation. This paper examines the concept of payments for blue carbon protection through the lens of three blue carbon research sites in Abu Dhabi, Madagascar and Mozambique. A literature review, coupled with research and interviews with practitioners at the three blue carbon research sites served to inform the development of this paper. The overarching goal of payments for blue carbon is to aid in the protection of these vital ecosystems while also providing resources and a means for the people living in these sensitive areas. This paper uncovers various opportunities, constraints and issues of uncertainty related to financing blue carbon protection through the sale of carbon offsets from blue carbon ecosystems. These issues are applied and examined in the context of three blue carbon research sites to uncover potential solutions.
Open Access
Developing Guidelines for a Blue Carbon Toolkit
(2015-04-23) Siciliano, Avery
Blue carbon describes the carbon sequestration potential and ecosystem services associated with coastal ecosystems including mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes. In countries without established marine protected areas or active restoration efforts, blue carbon may serve as a mechanism for preventing coastal destruction, which increases shoreline vulnerability and negatively affects the species native to these habitats. Additional benefits of blue carbon include increased national and international climate change mitigation efforts. Blue carbon works by creating markets that shift a country’s economic incentive away from destructive activities toward protecting their critical ecosystems. This paper evaluates the demand for information and current challenges facing three Global Environment Facility Blue Forests pilot projects in order to provide guidelines for the development of a blue carbon “toolkit.” A user-friendly toolkit aimed at project managers and field ecologists would help them to show various approaches to blue carbon, to determine which protocols best fit the social and political conditions of their site, and to identify field work that may be required to pursue the chosen protocol. Blue Forests demonstration projects in Abu Dhabi, Ecuador, and Madagascar, were analyzed in addition to an extensive literature review to understand the most functional approach to organizing blue carbon resources in a toolkit.
Open Access
Linking MPA effectiveness to the future of local rural fishing societies
(ICES Journal of Marine Science, 2018-05-01) Basurto, Xavier
Open Access
Surfonomics Nosara: Surf Tourists' Potential to Contribute to Environmental Protection
(2023-04-28) Dixon, Natalie
Maintaining healthy ecosystems often requires monetary resources, in developed and developing countries alike. These resources can, in part, come from businesses and activities that benefit from the ecosystems being maintained. For example, millions of surfers each year travel to beaches far from their homes in pursuit of the perfect wave (Mach and Ponting, 2020). Through expenditures on accommodations, food and activities, these surf tourists often provide some level of monetary benefit to the towns adjacent to the beach that is home to the wave they are chasing. However, the consumer surplus benefit that surfers enjoy from surfing itself is primarily unrealized and is not financially contributing to the preservation and conservation of the natural resources upon which these tourists depend. There are an abundance of studies trying to capture the surplus economic benefit of other ocean-related activities, such as fishing, diving, and beach-going, with little attention being paid to the economic benefit that surfers and surf tourists could provide (Nelson, 2007). Since surfing has grown “to become, after swimming, the most popular water sport in the world,” it is important to attempt to determine the economic benefit that surfers provide and how this might be leveraged to conserve integral ecosystems (Young, 1983). The concept of “surfonomics,” the combination of surfing and economics, aims to determine the economic benefit that surfing brings to coastal communities. The goal of surfonomics is to use surfing as a conservation tool through both accounting for the economic benefit of surfing, while also appealing to the millions of surfers around the world. The site for this study, Playa Guiones, is in the town of Nosara in the Guanacaste province of Costa Rica, along the Nicoya Peninsula on the west coast of the country. Nosara originally became popularized because of the plethora of yoga and wellness retreats that used Nosara as their destination. Further, Playa Guiones is a world class surfing destination, known for having some of the most consistently breaking waves in the world, accessible to all levels of surfers (Francis, 2021). Nosara is the largest of the five Blue Zones in the world (Johnson). A Blue Zone is an area of the world where people, on average, live the longest and are the healthiest (History of Blue Zones, 2021). On top of the benefits from the yoga/ wellness and surfing communities, its designation as a Blue Zone has created a hyper-attractive destination for both tourists and expatriates. This increase in notoriety and tourism has come with a 42% increase in the level of development from 2017-2018 alone (Nosara Civic Association). The environmental effects of this increase in development are being seen through the salinization in aquifers in Nosara due to the large amount of water that the new construction requires (Nosara Civic Association). The goal of this study is to determine if surf tourists can provide economic resources sufficient to protect the surf ecosystem at Playa Guiones in Nosara, Guanacaste, Costa Rica. The study sought to answer this question through 1) conducting a survey analysis to determine each surfer’s willingness to pay a beach entrance fee in the low season (May-Dec) and 2) calculating the conservation finance gap in Playa Guiones and determining how many surf tourists would need to pay a fee each year in order to close it. The specific methods used to achieve the study goal were as follows: 1) Designing a survey and surveying surf tourists along Playa Guiones from June- August of 2022. 2) Conducting analysis using regression models to determine which environmental attributes were most important to surf tourists. 3) Obtaining conservation finance data from the Ostional Wildlife Refuge to determine if surf tourists would be able to provide money sufficient to close the conservation finance gap that exists along Playa Guiones. The results from this study show that the two most important environmental attributes to surf tourists are high levels of beach cleanliness and low levels of new development in Playa Guiones. Further, the study shows that closing the conservation finance gap along Playa Guiones with the introduction of a $7 daily beach entrance fee is feasible.
Open Access
Towards More Standardization in the Collecting and Reporting of Marine Ecosystem Service Valuations
(2012-04-26) Jungwiwattanaporn, Megan
Over the past two decades the valuation literature for coastal and marine resources has rapidly expanded. This has led to a wealth of valuation estimates for policy makers and resource managers to incorporate into their decision making. The rapid growth of the literature has been supported by a wide variety of approaches, methodologies, and contexts leading to a broad and diverse field. Although the diversity of the field can lead to innovative ideas and perspectives, the variations in approaches and reporting has also lead to uncertainty and differing interpretations of values. This Master’s Project works with the Marine Ecosystem Services Partnership (MESP) and their partner the World Resources Institute (WRI). The purpose was to analyze the current state of ecosystem services valuation and the feasibility of bringing standards to the field. Standards could help improve the reliability of estimates, increase comparability of studies, and encourage better communication within the field. A three part study, this project 1) analyzes the MESP database of values for gaps and trends, 2) interviews economists to gather their views on standardization, 3) interviews data users of the WRI Coastal Capital project to see how they have used the project and how they would improve it going forward. This Master’s Project focuses on three ecosystems: coral reefs, mangroves, and seagrasses. At the end of the project, recommendations were given to the MESP on how they could improve their database and ways to better facilitate a discussion concerning the needs, obstacles and opportunities surrounding standardization.