Significance
Marine conservation and the establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs) have gained attention as ways to protect and restore ecosystems and rebuild fish populations. They may also play an important role in sequestering carbon and reducing emissions from sources such as habitat degradation. Implementing six strategies for enhancing blue carbon sinks, including establishing MPAs to protect and restore coastal wetlands, macroalgae forests, and seafloor sediments and expand seaweed farming can not only remove significant amounts of carbon and avoid emissions but also bring many more environmental and human-related benefits.
Perennial vegetables are a neglected and underutilized class of crops with potential to address 21 st century challenges. They represent 33-56% of cultivated vegetable species, and occupy 6% of world vegetable cropland. Despite their distinct relevance to climate change mitigation and nutritional security, perennial vegetables receive little attention in the scientific literature. Compared to widely grown and marketed vegetable crops, many perennial vegetables show higher levels of key nutrients needed to address deficiencies. Trees with edible leaves are the group of vegetables with the highest levels of these key nutrients. Individual "multi-nutrient" species are identified with very high levels of multiple nutrients for addressing deficiencies. This paper reports on the synthesis and meta-analysis of a heretofore fragmented global literature on 613 cultivated perennial vegetables, representing 107 botanical families from every inhabited continent, in order to characterize the extent and potential of this class of crops. Carbon sequestration potential from new adoption of perennial vegetables is estimated at 22.7-280.6 MMT CO2-eq/yr on 4.6-26.4 Mha by 2050.
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