The first half of this Regenerative Hour is about mangroves, seaweed and blue carbon in an indigenous perspective. The rest of the podcast digs into the topics of soil health and carbon sequestering through regenerative farming.

Our guests are: Zoe Ellen Brittain who is working on a PhD at Deakin University where she is looking at how First Nation Australians used seaweed with a view to investigating the commercial possibilities for them in this area, and Oli Moraes who has looked at blue carbon – mangroves and seagrasses – in the Pacific Island region as a means to addressing climate change mitigation, adaptation, biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. Oli has a Bachelors of Arts and Science from Monash University where he studied earth sciences and international studies and recently completed a Master of Environment at the University of Melbourne specialising in climate change and conservation. His Masters research took him to Fiji in 2018 where he worked with Fijian conservation NGOs, practitioners, government agencies and indigenous communities around Fiji to understand the opportunities and challenges of protecting and restoring blue carbon ecosystems through carbon market approaches. He focused on empowering all voices and particularly capturing the deep indigenous knowledges about coastal resource management in his research.Oli currently works at the Brotherhood of St Laurence as an Energy Broker in their Climate and Energy Research Group, and as a Research Assistant at RMIT University with IPCC lead author on climate change adaptation Dr Lauren Rickards.

The interview was conducted by Anthony Gleeson

It’s time for planetary-scale interventions to combat climate change — and environmentalist Tim Flannery thinks seaweed can help. In a bold talk, he shares the epic carbon-capturing potential of seaweed, explaining how oceangoing seaweed farms created on a massive scale could trap all the carbon we emit into the atmosphere. Learn more about this potentially planet-saving solution — and the work that’s still needed to get there.

Blue carbon in Australia: 20 million tonnes CO2 annually

“Australia’s mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrass meadows are absorbing about 20m tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, according to a major new study that is the first to measure in detail the climate benefits of the coastal ecosystems.But the study, published in the journal Nature Communications, warns that degradation of these “vegetated coastal ecosystems” was already seeing 3 million tonnes of CO2 per year being released back into the atmosphere.The study reveals Australia’s vast coastlines represent between 5% and 11% of all the so called “blue carbon” locked up in mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes globally. Some 44 scientists from 33 different research institutions collaborated on the study, which began in 2014.”

→ The Guardian – 1 October 2019:Australia’s vast carbon sink releasing millions of tonnes of CO2 back into atmosphere “Australia’s mangroves and seag...