Category: Blue Forests
We’re supporting coastal communities to link the conservation of mangrove, seagrass and coastal wetland habitats with international carbon markets and other payments for ecosystem services.

How is your climate literacy?
by Sylvia Paulot, Blue Carbon Scientist, Toliara – Madagascar I recently attended a training on climate change and marine protected areas in South Africa, part of the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association (WIOMSA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration...

Mapping resources with the communities in the Bay of Assassins
by Katrina Dewar, Field Scientist, Madagascar This was my first introduction to the lives of the Blue Forests team – finally I got to go on an adventure with them! For a whole week we worked on developing resource use...

Longing for a carbon project
by Sylvia Paulot, Blue Carbon Scientist, Toliara – Madagascar For Mamelo Honko, a community based association for mangrove protection in Ambondrolava, southwest Madagascar, International Mangrove Day (held on July 26th) is one of the rare occasions to share publicly their...

Blue forests: progress made and looking forward
By Trevor Jones, Geospatial Analyst and Manager, Vancouver If someone had told me three years ago that I would come to work in Madagascar’s mangrove forests, I wouldn’t have believed them. Fast forward to July 2011 and I found myself commencing...

Staff Q&A with Sylvia Paulot, Mangrove Carbon Scientist
In the seventh instalment in our series of Q&As with Blue Ventures staff, we ask Sylvia Paulot, our Mangrove Carbon Scientist, some searching questions about science, conservation and superpowers… What is your scientific background? I studied Environmental Science at Sebelas Maret University, in Central...

A meeting of minds: blue carbon in the Tsiribihina Delta
by Kate England, Mangrove REDD+ Project Development Manager, Madagascar It’s Wednesday morning and the Catholic school building in Morondava, western Madagascar, is just getting its first trickle of people – but this was not a regular school day and we were...

Blue forests workshop
This article by Mairead Rocke was originally published on the Blue Carbon Portal: you can read the original post here On the 17th and 18th of January 2013, the validation workshop for the GEF Blue Forests project was held at the...

Visiting the father of Gazelles
by Lalao Aigrette, Mangrove Field Scientist, Madagascar I recently visited the United Arab Emirates to participate in the Abu Dhabi Blue Carbon Demonstration Project (ADBCDP). In Arabic, Abu Dhabi means the father of gazelle (Abu = father of, and Dhabi = gazelle),...

Life in the mangrove forest: what happens exactly?
by Zo Andriamahenina, Blue Forests Research Assistant, Madagascar My first time working in the mangrove forest was in February 2012. Before, I had never walked into one, so I could not picture what we would see or find in this...

Blue carbon in Abu Dhabi
by Trevor Jones, Remote Sensing Scientist, Madagascar Lalao Aigrette, fellow BV Blue Forests colleague, and I recently spent a fascinating two weeks in the western coast of the Arabian Gulf. We were participating in the initial research of the Abu...

Antanandahy: where the women rule the mangroves
by Sylvia Paulot and Kate England, Blue Forests team, Madagascar After winding its way west, Madagascar’s Tsiribihina River empties into the Mozambique Channel in a maze of tributaries entwined with mangroves. At the end of last year, Sylvia and Kate...

A journey of crab catching in the mangrove channel
by Sylvia Paulot, Blue Forests Scientist, Madagascar As mangrove conservation officer, I have visited many villages in mangrove forests, and talked much with the local people, but I have never really experienced first-hand the daily life of a fisher from one...

Making moves towards Madagascar’s first mangrove carbon project
by the Blue Forests Team, Madagascar Madagascar’s 5,600 km coastline includes Africa’s third largest extent of mangroves: an estimated 213,000 hectares! These “blue” forests take and store significant amounts of carbon dioxide and support a diverse and in many cases...

Mangrove madness and reserve success in Antanimanimbo
by Jérémie Bossert, Belo sur Mer Conservation Coordinator, Madagascar It’s the 23rd of September 2012, and dawn is breaking on the fifth reserve opening in the Belo sur Mer region, today in the village of Antanimanimbo. After six months without any...

Blue forests: behind the scenes…
by Samir Gandhi, Blue Forests Research Assistant, Madagascar A lot has changed for me in 12 months, undoubtedly for the better. Just over a year ago I was stuck in a dead-end office job; now, I am working for Blue Ventures...