Climate Change officers attends training

Three Officers from Climate Change and Development Authority (CCDA) have attended the Pacific Blue Carbon Training Programme from 04th to 17th of September, at North Stradbroke Island, Brisbane, Australia.
The programme was part of the assistance that the Australian Government provided to Pacific countries to better monitor and manage coastal blue carbon ecosystems (mangroves, saltmarsh, and seagrasses); as part of their efforts to address climate change. The two-week training consisted of participants from Fiji and Papua New Guinea.
Blue carbon or carbon sequestration is the removal of carbon dioxide from the earth’s atmosphere by the world’s oceanic and coastal ecosystems, mostly by algae, seagrasses, macroalgae, mangroves, salt marshes and other plants in coastal wetlands. This occurs through plant growth and the accumulation and burial of organic matter in the soil.
According to Mr Jason Paniu from CCDA’s Measurement, Reporting and Verification (MRV) Division said Papua New Guinea (PNG) lacks the capacity, technology and finance to collect, store and analyse Blue Carbon (BC) data.
“As a result, PNG does not have a Blue Carbon policy for the country. He said the mangroves are incorporated into the Green House Gas (GHG) inventories however, saltmarsh and seagrasses were never incorporated into the Green House Gas (GHG) inventories over the past years,” Mr Paniu said.
“PNG has a diverse area of blue carbon ecosystems in the country, but we have overlooked its importance because of our incapability. Therefore, this training was very important to us and our stakeholders who will be involved in both development and implementation of the blue carbon the policy.”
The main objectives of attending the Pacific Blue Carbon training were to: Build capacity on how to collect, measure, map, and be able to do analysis on Blue Carbon Data. Formulate a Blue Carbon policy for PNG and Incorporate Blue Carbon into the National GHG Inventory
Ms Everlyn Paul from MRV and NC Division who attended the training said: “This training was very useful for our job, specifically for GHG Inventory purposes. Since the Blue Carbon topic is new to the country, we still need more training to successfully implement blue carbon projects in the country and most importantly to incorporate blue carbon into our current GHG inventories. Overall, I enjoyed every part of the training and looking forward to attending more of such training if there are possibilities available.”
Mr Japheth Gai said: “My experience from the training as an MRV officer was that I gained skills and knowledge on how Blue carbon ecosystems can be captured in our National GHG inventories reports. It was a great learning experience especially the remote sensing methods and algorithms for mapping and monitoring mangroves ecosystems.”