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The increase of anthropogenic carbon dioxide (CO2) since the industrial revolution era affects the global carbon cycle and triggers climate changes. Indonesia has ratified the Paris Agreement and declared the emission reduction for climate action (Sustainable Development Goal 13) up to 29% (independently) or 41% (with international support) in 2030 relative to the business as usual (BAU) scenario. The effort to achieve this target is implemented on Low Carbon Development Initiative (LCDI) starting in 2020. LCDI adopts marine and fisheries as one of the implementing sectors that focus on blue carbon. To implement the activities as part of the carbon emission reduction within the LCDI, we have to establish a calculation method that should be measurable, reportable, and verifiable (MRV). The present article introduces the MRV method for calculating the carbon emission reduction for the Conservation/Protection Seagrass Ecosystem’s climate change mitigation activity on Marine Protected Area (MPA). We present how to calculate the baseline emission (business as usual), emission leakage when implementing the activity, and emission reduction. A case study on seagrass meadows of Kepulauan Seribu MPA is presented for the trial of the introduced method and formula. Using the proposed method is reliable enough to estimate carbon emission reduction from seagrass conservation activity within the MPA. We can calculate the carbon emission will reduce 4.35 tC relative to the BAU on Kepulauan Seribu MPA by 2030.

Climate action regarding carbon inventory requires baseline assessment, data regarding annual changes, and evaluation of reductions in carbon emissions. However, many studies of seagrass ecosystems have focused only on carbon stock and sequestration, neglecting the importance of the carbon emission factor. It is known that emission factors for land-use change, including those in seagrass ecosystems, can be derived from biomass and sediment carbon stock. Since currently Indonesia only has data for biomass carbon stock, we propose the measurement of province-based emission factors. This study combines the available carbon stock data reported in national or international publications and conducts a meta-analysis to obtain emission factor values. The results show that the biomass standing carbon stock of Indonesia’s seagrass meadows ranges from 0.30 tC/ha (i.e., Special Region of Yogyakarta) to 16.51 tC/ha (i.e., Gorontalo province), while emission factor ranges from 0.012 tC/ha/yr to 0.661 tC/ha/yr (equal to 0.05 t CO2/ha/yr to 2.42 t CO2/ha/yr). These findings will be beneficial for developing Tier 3 carbon inventory since they allow country-specific emission factor for the seagrass ecosystem to be measured.

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