Mangrove deforestation emits as much CO2 as Myanmar each year
Source: Eco Business
The world's mangrove forests, with their archetypal twisted roots protruding from the water surface, store more than 4 billion tonnes of carbon, new research shows.
Deforestation—often to make way for fish farming—has seen the global area of mangroves decline by 2 per cent between 2000 and 2012.
The amount of carbon released through clearing mangroves amounts to 24m tonnes of CO2 per year, the research finds—equivalent to the annual emissions of Myanmar.
The study, published in Nature Climate Change, presents a global dataset of mangrove carbon stocks at national, regional and local scales. This will allow officials, researchers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to monitor the "loss rates for their site of interest almost anywhere globally", the lead author tells Carbon Brief.
