Teal Carbon:
India’s first study on ‘teal carbon’, undertaken at Keoladeo National Park (KNP) in Rajasthan’s Bharatpur district, has highlighted the significance of wetland conservation to address the challenges of climate adaptation and resilience.
- Teal Carbon refers to carbon stored in non-tidal freshwater wetlands, encompassing carbon sequestered in vegetation, microbial biomass and dissolved and particulate organic matter.
- These ecosystems are considered to be more effective at carbon capture and storage than terrestrial forest ecosystems and can store and sequester more carbon than any other type of terrestrial ecosystem.
- The concept of teal carbon is a recent addition to the environmental science pertaining to organic carbon in inland fresh wetlands.
- It is a colour-based terminology reflects the classification of organic carbon based on its functions and location rather than its physical properties.
- At the global level, the storage of teal carbon across the ecosystems is estimated to be 21 petagrams of carbon (PgC), which is a unit to measure carbon.
- Peatlands, freshwater swamps and natural freshwater marshes account for a significant amount of this storage.
- Though these wetlands play a crucial role in regulating greenhouse gases, they are vulnerable to degradation from pollution, land use changes, water extraction and landscape modifications.
