Mikoko Pamoja, A Blue Carbon Project for Climate Resilience

The climate crisis is an impending reality, marked by a significant rise in global temperatures. Global warming triggers a variety of issues, including biodiversity crisis, extreme weather events, natural disasters, food and water insecurity, economic disruptions, and even conflicts worldwide. In Kenya,the Gazi Bay community has launched Mikoko Pamoja, a blue carbon project that actively protects and restores mangrove forests, contributing to climate action and coastal community resilience.

Blue Carbon Ecosystems

Over the past 200 years, human activity—particularly the burning of fossil fuels—has been the main cause of climate change. Rising global temperatures have triggered and worsened existing problems like droughts, wildfires, sea level rise, floods, melting glaciers, and biodiversity loss.

Nature-based solutions, such as the restoration and conservation of coastal ecosystems, offer a way to address these problems. In this case, blue carbon can play a part.

Blue carbon refers to the carbon stored in coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, tidal and salt marshes, and seagrasses. These ecosystems can absorb carbon up to ten times more than tropical forests each year and store three to five times more carbon per unit area, making them essential to reduce carbon emission. Beyond that, coastal ecosystems serve as foundational support for marine biodiversity and coastal communities, including in food security, income, and shoreline protection.

The Mikoko Pamoja Project

In 2010, the Gazi Bay community in Kenya launched Mikoko Pamoja, a community-based initiative combining coastal ecosystem conservation with socio-economic development. The project sells carbon credits from mangrove restoration to achieve three goals: mitigating climate change, conserving biodiversity, and enhancing community livelihoods.

The mangrove ecosystem in Kenya had declined by 20% between 1990 and 2020. In Gazi Bay specifically, this decline occurs due to deforestation, illegal harvesting, land degradation, and climate change. To address this issue, the Mikoko Pamoja Initiative works on conserving 117 hectares of mangrove forests, equivalent to almost 16% of Gazi Bay’s mangrove ecosystem. The project also contributes to beach restoration by replanting 4,000 mangrove trees, as a part to address sedimentation and erosion issues due to illegal logging. Additionally, the project has established community policing and marked protected reserve boundaries to prevent deforestation.

The revenue generated through the project’s carbon credit trading goes back to the community to improve access to clean water and education for the residents. The project has also trained 12 local teachers on mangrove conservation.

Driving Conservation and Collaboration

Mikoko Pamoja demonstrates how nature-based, community-led initiatives can offer potential climate solutions while directly benefiting local populations. Additionally, it also highlights the potential of blue carbon projects in addressing environmental and socio-economic challenges in coastal regions. The effective and responsible implementation of similar projects will require governments, local communities, and the private sector to work together to invest in community-based conservation, ensure fair carbon credit mechanisms, and strengthen policies that protect coastal ecosystems.

Editor: Nazalea Kusuma & Kresentia Madina

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