FEATURE April 22, 2019

Apple, Conservation International and Colombian Communities Partner to Protect Earth’s Carbon-Trapping Coastal Trees

But pressures from illegal farming, fishing and logging combined with climate change are threatening their existence. “There are many illegal groups working in the mangroves,” Canchila Avila says. “They don’t know or care for the sustainability efforts.” According to Conservation International, when degraded or destroyed, mangroves and other coastal ecosystems emit the carbon they have stored for centuries into the atmosphere and become sources of greenhouse gases. They estimate that as much as 1 billion metric tons of CO₂ are being released annually from degraded coastal ecosystems.¹ That’s equivalent to the total annual emissions from cars, buses, aircraft and boats in the US in 2017.

For Apple’s Earth Day 2018 Give Back campaign, Apple partnered with Conservation International to protect and restore the 27,000-acre mangrove forest in Cispatá Bay, which is expected to sequester 1 million metric tons of CO₂ over its lifetime. At the Global Climate Action Summit last September in California, Apple’s Vice President of Environment, Policy and Social Initiatives Lisa Jackson underscored the importance of this type of preservation. “These forests are critical because they’re one of nature's most important tools in the battle against climate change,” she said. “Globally, we’ve lost half of the world’s mangrove forests since the 1940s — so it’s high time we start preserving and protecting them.”

¹ Pendleton, L., D.C. Donato, B.C. Murray, S. Crooks, W.A. Jenkins, S. Sifleet, C. Craft, J.W. Fourqurean, J.B. Kauffman, N. Marbà, P. Megonigal, E. Pidgeon, D. Herr, D. Gordon and A. Baldera. “Estimating Global ‘Blue Carbon’ Emissions from Conversion and Degradation of Vegetated Coastal Ecosystems,” 2012.