Posted on August 1, 2016
By Larz Bourne, Maritime Journal
The Belgium based European Dredging Association (EuDA) has announced its 2016 Annual General Assembly Conference will take place in the Stanhope Hotel in Brussels on Tuesday, 15 November 2016 at 10.00.
The theme of this year’s Conference is:Global CO2 Emissions: New Business Opportunities for the European Dredgers?
The 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change set the political wheel in motion to prevent the threat of excessive climate change, with a particular focus on CO2 emissions. At the Paris Conference of the Parties of the Climate Change Convention in December 2015, politicians agreed to set the absolute global target for the rise of the Earth’s temperature to 1.5°C.
CO2 emissions reductions cannot be fully disconnected from global economic activity nor from global trade. Therefore, measures improving the performance and efficiency of ships should be complemented by actions which directly target atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
European dredgers can contribute to this objective, using their expertise to create new marine habitats and restore damaged ones which are natural carbon sinks, known as Blue Carbon. The International Blue Carbon Initiative is a coordinated, global program focused on mitigating climate change through the conservation and restoration of coastal and marine ecosystems. Blue carbon is the carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems. The Blue Carbon Initiative currently focuses on carbon in coastal ecosystems – mangroves, tidal marshes and seagrasses. These ecosystems sequester and store large quantities of blue carbon in both the plants and the sediment below. For example, over 95% of the carbon in seagrass meadows is stored in the soils
The conference will be followed by a networking lunch. For further information contact Paris Sansoglou, EuDA Secretary General, at paris.sansoglou@euda.be or visit www.european-dredging.eu
Source: Maritime Journal
