Today there are many technological initiatives dedicated to trying to mitigate the effects of climate change. While some are committed to reducing emissions of the main greenhouse gases, others are committed to actively removing them from the atmosphere. Both options, in most cases, have a very high cost and uncertain long-term results.
However, a study by the team of economists at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) proposes a simple and cost-effective method to fight global warming. It is about protecting the whales and promoting the increase of their populations.
It turns out that these large cetaceans play a decisive role in capturing carbon from the atmosphere. We are talking about the fact that each whale sequesters, on average, about 30 tons of carbon throughout its life. A large quantity that, after its death, will remain submerged in the ocean floor for centuries, away from the atmosphere and contributing to the well-known greenhouse effect. By way of comparison between species, a tree absorbs only about 21.8 kilos of carbon per year.
But the ecological work of these cetaceans does not end here. Their waste, rich in elements such as iron or nitrogen , have a multiplier effect on the populations of phytoplankton , on which most of them feed. These microscopic creatures, apart from producing at least 50% of O₂ in our atmosphere, are capable of capturing 40% of the CO₂ produced annually globally, that is, about 37 billion tons. An amount equivalent to what would capture 1.70 trillion trees or four Amazon rainforests.
By protecting the life of a whale, we also protect the phytoplankton that it supports, resulting in a multiplier effect of absorption of atmospheric carbon equivalent to planting thousands of trees.
For all this, and adding the benefits of cetacean ecotourism and the improvements in fish populations for maritime trade that would imply protecting current whale populations, the IMF estimates the value of each whale at more than 2 million dollars , about 3 trillion dollars for the total current population of these cetaceans globally (about 1.3 million whales).
Imagine what role they could play in the fight against climate change if we allowed their populations to recover to those of times before their overfishing, and in the world there were four times more whales than we have today … This is what economists The IMF call it an earth-tech strategy, which in addition to improving the health of the oceans, would also improve the health of the land and therefore ours.
Reference: Ralph Chami, Thomas Cosimano, Connel Fullenkamp, & Sena Oztosun (2019). Nature’s Solution to Climate Change. A strategy to protect whales can limit greenhouse gases and global warming. Finance & Development, 56 (4).
