Albert Pessarrodona1, Karen Filbee-Dexter1,2, Thomas Wernberg1,2
1UWA Oceans Institute and School of Biological Sciences, University of Western Australia, Crawley, 6 Western Australia 6009, Australia, 2Institute of Marine Research, His, Norway
Macroalgae are increasingly under consideration as a nature-based climate mitigation strategy, attracting interest from a range of policy, industrial, and conservation actors. Additionally, several countries have indicated an interest in including wild macroalgae conservation and/or macroalgae farming in their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). Several uncertainties remain, however, around whether sufficient scientific knowledge is available for macroalgae carbon to be included in climate policy actions and related financial mechanisms. This talk will provide an overview of some of the knowledge gaps precluding macroalgae integration into existing accounting frameworks, and discuss some of the opportunities that the uniqueness of macroalgae carbon sequestration may bring. The talk will also provide an introduction to the mini-symposium Carbon cycling and sequestration by macroalgae