Coastal Management

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ucmg20

Strategies to Improve Management of Indonesia’s

Blue Carbon Seagrass Habitats in Marine
Protected Areas

Husen Rifai, Udhi E. Hernawan, Firman Zulpikar, Calvyn F. A. Sondakh,

Rohani Ambo-Rappe, Nurul D. M. Sjafrie, Andri Irawan, Hadi Y. Dewanto,
Yusmiana P. Rahayu, Jeverson Reenyan, Muhammad Safaat, La ode Alifatri,
Susi Rahmawati, Amehr Hakim, Andi Rusandi & Mintje Wawo

To cite this article: Husen Rifai, Udhi E. Hernawan, Firman Zulpikar, Calvyn F. A. Sondakh,
Rohani Ambo-Rappe, Nurul D. M. Sjafrie, Andri Irawan, Hadi Y. Dewanto, Yusmiana P.
Rahayu, Jeverson Reenyan, Muhammad Safaat, La ode Alifatri, Susi Rahmawati, Amehr
Hakim, Andi Rusandi & Mintje Wawo (2022): Strategies to Improve Management of Indonesia’s
Blue Carbon Seagrass Habitats in Marine Protected Areas, Coastal Management, DOI:
10.1080/08920753.2022.2022948

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2022.2022948

Published online: 09 Jan 2022.

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Coastal Management
https://doi.org/10.1080/08920753.2022.2022948

ESSAY

Strategies to Improve Management of Indonesia’s Blue

Carbon Seagrass Habitats in Marine Protected Areas
Husen Rifaia, Udhi E. Hernawana, Firman Zulpikara, Calvyn F. A. Sondakhb,
Rohani Ambo-Rappec, Nurul D. M. Sjafriea, Andri Irawanf,g, Hadi Y.
Dewantod, Yusmiana P. Rahayue,h, Jeverson Reenyana, Muhammad Safaata,
La ode Alifatria, Susi Rahmawatia, Amehr Hakimd, Andi Rusandid and Mintje
Wawo
a
Research Center for Oceanography, Indonesian Institute of Sciences (LIPI), Jakarta Utara, Indonesia;
b
Faculty of Fisheries and Marine Science, Sam Ratulangi University, Manado, Indonesia; cFaculty of
Marine Science and Fisheries, Department of Marine Science, Hasanuddin University, Makassar,
Indonesia; dMinistry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries of the Republic of Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia;
e
Marine Research Center, Agency for Marine and Fisheries Research and Human Resources, Ministry of
Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Jakarta, Indonesia; fResearch Center for Deep Sea, Indonesian Institute of
Sciences, Ambon, Indonesia; gEnvironmental and Conservation Studies, Murdoch University, Murdoch,
Western Australia; hSchool of Biological Sciences and the UWA Ocean Institutes, The University of
Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia; iFaculty of Marine Science and Fisheries, Pattimura
University, Ambon, Indonesia

ABSTRACT
Indonesia’s seagrass habitats play an important role in the fight KEYWORDS
against climate change since they store a significant portion of the Indonesia;
world’s blue carbon. Despite progress in conservation efforts and seagrasses;
increasing number of Indonesia’s marine protected areas (MPAs), these MPAs;
habitats are generally still under multitude of pressures leading to management;
declining condition. Thus, there is a growing need to improve the coastal ecosystem;
conservation management of seagrass habitats, especially within MPAs conservation
in Indonesia. Here, we identify five challenges on managing seagrass
meadows in Indonesia’s MPAs: (1) Achieving societal awareness on
the importance of seagrasses in Indonesia’ MPAs; (2) Achieving fair
recognition from the management authority of Indonesia’s MPAs; (3)
Obtaining political initiatives related to laws and regulations on sea-
grass management; (4) Providing empirical data on seagrass habitats
at national level repeated over time; and (5) Enhancing capacity to
conduct community-based management of seagrasses. Then, we pro-
pose a series of solutions to solve these challenges. We believe that
all stakeholders need to work collaboratively to secure the future of
Indonesia’s seagrass habitats and maintain their capacity to deliver
significant ecosystem services.

Introduction
Seagrass meadows, a globally important blue carbon habitat, provide crucial ecosystem
services. These services include capturing and storing huge amounts of atmospheric
carbon for long periods (centuries or even millennia) in their sediment. This service

CONTACT Husen Rifai lamunhusen@gmail.com Research Center for Oceanography, Indonesian Institute of
Sciences (LIPI), Jl Pasir Putih No. 1, Ancol Timur, Jakarta Utara 14430, Indonesia.
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
2 H. RIFAI ET AL.

helps global climate change mitigation and adaptation (Fourqurean et al. 2012). In
addition, seagrass habitats also provide several other important services, i.e., nursery
and foraging grounds for commercially important fishes and invertebrates (Unsworth
et al. 2014). Coastal protection (James et al. 2019) and social-ecological services
(Cullen-Unsworth et al. 2014) are also recognized as important services provided by
seagrass habitats.
The condition and areal extent of the world’s seagrass habitats, however, is declining.
The rate of decline of global seagrasses spatial extent since 1980 has been calculated
to be 110 km2 yr−1 (Waycott et al. 2009). Previous studies estimated seagrass cover
worldwide was between 300,000 km2 (Duarte, Middelburg, and Caraco 2005) and
600,000 km2 (Charpy-Roubaud and Sournia 1990) but a recent study claimed that
seagrass area to date was only between 160,387 km2 and 266.562 km2 (McKenzie et al.
2020). Eutrophication and thermal stress were found to be major causes of seagrass
decline globally (Salinas et al. 2020).
Indonesia’s expansive seagrass habitats help mitigate global climate change. A study
conducted by Green and Short (2003) estimated that Indonesia has 3 million ha of
seagrass areas; this projection is possibly a gross underestimation (Unsworth et al. 2018).
Therefore, Indonesia’s seagrass meadows are potentially storing up to 368.5 Tg C or 2%
of the world’s blue carbon (Alongi et al. 2016) where its annual ability to store carbon
is on average of 6.59 Mg C/ha/year or 24.13 Mg CO2/ha/year (Sjafrie et al. 2018).
Unfortunately, the spatial extent of Indonesia’s seagrass beds is also declining due
largely to anthropogenic threats such as pollution, overfishing, garbage dumping, land
reclamation, coastal development and land-use conversion to aquaculture areas
(Unsworth et al. 2018). This decline is exacerbated by the lack of law enforcement
regarding the protection and conservation of Indonesia’s seagrass beds (Unsworth et al.
2018; Sjafrie et al. 2018). A recent study conducted at 110 sampling areas throughout
Indonesia’s coastal areas revealed that the current status of Indonesia’s seagrass habitats
is moderately degraded (Hernawan et al. 2021). It is estimated that its coverage was
also declining from around 3 million ha in 2003 (Green and Short 2003) to only
between 832,000 and 1,800,000 ha in 2018 (Sjafrie et al. 2018).
The degradation of seagrass meadows could lead to severe consequences since
vast amounts of organic carbon stored in their soils might be released back into the
ocean and atmosphere in the form of CO2, adding to the sources of ocean acidifi-
cation and global warming (Fourqurean et al. 2012; Lovelock et al. 2017). To prevent
or delay these consequences, the marine protected areas (MPAs) framework should
promote seagrass conservation and restoration. This system is globally recognized
as an effective tool to protect and rehabilitate ocean and coastal biodiversity and
resources, ecosystem services, cultural values, as well as reducing human pressures
(Rodríguez-Rodríguez 2019). To date, Indonesia has 201 MPAs with the total area
of 24.11 million ha or 7.41% of all Indonesian waters, nearly achieving Indonesia’s
target to designate 10% or 32.5 million ha of its total marine areas as MPAs in 2030
(MMAF 2020).
Indonesia’s MPAs, however, do not guarantee the sustainability of seagrass habitats
because the management authority of Indonesia’s MPAs still largely focuses on both
coral reefs and mangrove forests. Commonly, Indonesia’s coastal ecosystem managers
 Coastal Management 3

still neglect seagrass meadows even though they have a crucial role as a transition
ecosystem located between mangrove forests and coral reefs and for their role in
addressing the rise in global temperature (Fourqurean et al. 2012).
Indonesia potentially has the largest blue carbon seagrass habitats on this planet
(Unsworth et al. 2018), thus, proper seagrass ecosystems management in marine pro-
tected areas is crucial. This paper discusses the management challenges of seagrass
habitats within Indonesia’s MPAs and offers some solutions to improve its management
regarding climate change mitigation and adaptation issues including ideas shared at a
March 31, 2021 online focus group discussion of experts representing agencies, research
agencies and NGOs.

Challenge 1: Lack of societal awareness on seagrass importance in indonesia’s

MPAs
Despite globally growing awareness of seagrass importance as an effective means to
mitigate global climate change (Macreadie et al. 2019), the public is relatively unaware
of its importance in Indonesia. Most of Indonesian government officials and local
communities living in or around protected areas do not recognize what seagrasses are
and the services they provide (Nadiarti et al. 2012; Cullen-Unsworth et al. 2014). In
addition, the position of seagrass meadows that usually lie underwater has made many
people unaware of their presence, even though they might have visited coastal areas
where seagrasses grow. This lack of awareness and understanding is the greatest chal-
lenge on seagrass conservation and rehabilitation actions in Indonesia (Nadiarti et al.
2012). Duarte et al. (2008) reported that the lack of understanding of seagrass eco-
system services will result in limited public support on conservation activities of
seagrass habitats. In contrast, the more public recognition of seagrass ecosystems could
lead to more pressures on the policy-makers to act and find solutions on the problems
(Unsworth et al. 2019).
Recent studies regarding coastal communities’ perceptions on ecosystem services
provided by seagrass habitats at two MPAs in Indonesia, Karimunjawa and Derawan
National Marine Park, showed that most of the respondents at those two MPAs were
not aware that seagrasses captured and stored large amounts of carbon (Lukman et al.
2020; Quevedo et al. 2021). There are two reasons behind this unawareness (Unsworth
et al. 2019). First, there is a limited understanding of coastal communities on blue
carbon services provided by seagrass habitats (Lukman et al. 2020). Indonesian coastal
residents are not fully aware that seagrass ecosystems are able to address climate
change. Second, many people have limited direct experience with seagrass habitats.
Direct experience with nature is crucial to boost environmental actions (Dunn et al.
2006). In consequence, the coastal people do not really appreciate seagrasses and treat
them improperly.
To improve Indonesian people’s seagrass awareness, we need to firstly translate the
scientific understanding of seagrass ecosystems into public awareness by writing more
to popular media such as online newspapers and a variety of social media platforms.
Secondly, we need to actively engage the community especially with the young gen-
eration by creating events such as “youth for seagrass” along with seeking a secure
4 H. RIFAI ET AL.

seed funding to maintain the activity. Thirdly, we should establish information boards
explaining what seagrasses are and the services they provide in all seagrass areas
especially in regions nearby the residentials areas. Fourthly, we need to include seagrass
science in the curriculum of primary to senior high schools in coastal areas. Lastly,
an effort to increase public awareness can also be done by creating public campaigns
across all Indonesia’s MPAs. The campaign must increase knowledge about the impor-
tance of seagrass ecosystems and inform what should be done to protect them while
compromising to local wisdom. This needs to be done as local wisdom of the com-
munity also contributes positively to the sustainability of seagrass beds (Marlina and
Astina 2020).

Challenge 2: Inequality in ecosystems management priority within Indonesia’s

MPAs
Indonesian government has a target to designate 10% or 32.5 million hectares of
Indonesian water as MPAs. As of 2020, Indonesia has established and is managing
more than 24.1 million hectares of MPAs or in total of 201 MPAs (MMAF 2020)
(see Figure 1). The provincial government manages most of the MPAs in Indonesia
or 58% at a number of 161 MPAs with a total area of almost 14 million hectares,
while ministry of marine affairs and fisheries (MMAF) and ministry of environment
and forestry (MOEF) manage around 22% and 15% of Indonesia’s MPAs, respectively
(see Table 1).
One of the objectives of MPAs establishment in Indonesia is to protect ecosystems
that are related to fish resources which include coral reefs, seagrass meadows, and
mangrove ecosystems. These three ecosystems have an essential function as nursery
ground for fish juvenile (Lefcheck et al. 2019). A recent study in 2020 that spatially
analyzed coverage of the mapped coastal marine habitats i.e., coral reefs, seagrass beds,
and mangrove forests within 196 MPAs found that from 129,283 ha of seagrass beds,

Figure 1. Map of marine protected areas in Indonesia (depicted in blue lines) (MMAF, 2020).
 Coastal Management 5

Table 1. The spatial extent and management authority of Indonesia’s MPAs (MMAF. 2020).
MPA Types and
No. Management Authority Total Number MPA Extent (ha)
A Managed by MMAF* 10 5,342,023.02
1 Marine National Park 1 3,355,352.82
2 Marine Nature Reserve 3 445,630.00
3 Marine Tourism Park 6 1,541,040.20
B Managed by Provincial 161 13,950,370.68
Government
4 Provincial Marine 153 13,949,677.46
Conservation Area
5 Provincial Public Inland 8 693.22
Water Conservation
C Managed by MOEF** 30 4,632,009.30
6 Marine National Park 7 3,968,975.30
7 Marine Nature 14 491,248.00
Recreational Park
8 Marine Wildlife Reserve 4 5,400.00
Grand Total 201 24,111,040.57
*MMAF = Ministry of marine affairs and fisheries, **MOEF = Ministry of environment and forestry.

Figure 2. Proportion (ha; %) of coastal habitats within and outside of Indonesia’s MPAs. Modified
from (Handayani et al., 2020).

about 36% (46,626 ha) are protected within MPA zones (Handayani et al., 2020). While
for coral reefs and mangrove forests, Indonesian MPAs cover around 43% of 2,038,522 ha
and 3% of 2,658,433 ha, respectively as seen on Figure 2.
Even though the presence of seagrass meadows is already recognized in the MPAs
coverage (Handayani et al., 2020), the attention on these important habitats is still
less than their neighboring ecosystems (i.e., mangrove forests and coral reefs). For
example, coral transplantation and mangrove planting are already appearing in some
of the MPA’s management programs, but not with seagrass rehabilitation. Although
there are no apparent extreme threats such as bombing on coral reefs or deforestation
on mangrove forests, seagrass meadows are threatened by some other activities such
as gleaning, overfishing, sand mining, pollution and coastal development (Unsworth
et al. 2018). Therefore, seagrass ecosystems still need more attentions than cur-
rently exists.
6 H. RIFAI ET AL.

We propose three solutions to protect and rehabilitate seagrass habitats lying within
Indonesia’s MPAs. First, we need to improve the method of MPA seagrass monitoring
programs. Recent monitoring programs apply percentage cover and shoot density as the
main indicators to detect changes in seagrass structure community (Rahmawati et al.
2017). However, this method fails to prevent the loss of seagrasses as the change in
seagrass percentage cover and shoot density occurs after the seagrasses die. Therefore,
a new method using molecular technology to early-detect the health condition of sea-
grasses needs to be implemented to prevent seagrass loss (Martin et al. 2020). Second,
we should conduct environmentally friendly seagrass restoration programs in all
poor-health status seagrass areas. Third, managers must secure funds from any sources
(government, NGOs or public) to maintain MPA conservation and rehabilitation programs.

Challenge 3: Establishing political initiatives and proper laws and regulations

on seagrass management regarding climate change mitigation
Recently, Indonesia has encouraged using marine and coastal ecosystems in climate
change mitigation and adaptation strategies. Indonesia is one of 151 countries that
have blue carbon potential, but Indonesia is not one of 19% of the parties that spe-
cifically raised blue carbon in their nationally determined contribution (NDC) for
climate change mitigation. However, at the Conference of the Parties (COP) 22 meeting,
Indonesia has submitted a plan to include blue carbon in the NDC under the Paris
Agreement. Then, at COP 25 Indonesia supported blue carbon for climate change
control. In terms of seagrass conservation initiatives, this control is realized by incor-
porating seagrass habitats into a conservation area. Efforts to protect the conservation
area have been stipulated in regulations in form of laws or ministerial regulations.
However, not all of these regulations mention the protection of the seagrass ecosystem
(see Table 2).
Table 2 illustrates that there is no special law or regulation to protect seagrass
ecosystems in the conservation areas even though there is a legal rule (MMAF-Kep.
No. 24/PERMEN-KP/2016) for the process of rehabilitation of these important eco-
systems. The effort to protect coastal ecosystems through the determination of MPAs

Table 2. Laws and regulations of Indonesian MPAs related to seagrass ecosystem.

Laws/Regulations Description
National Fisheries Law (Law No. 31/2004 article 13 verse Conservation on fish and their related habitats that
1) include seagrass beds, coral reefs and mangrove
forests
Management of Coastal Areas and Small Islands (Law Preserving coastal ecosystems includes efforts to protect
No. 27/2007 article 28 verse 1a) sand dunes, estuaries, lagoons, bays, deltas,
mangroves, coral reefs, and seagrass beds.
Marine Issues (Law No. 32/2014 article 22 verse 3) Management and utilization of coastal natural resources
Ministerial Regulation and small islands include fish, coral reefs, seagrass
beds, mangrove forests, and the other marine
creatures.
Procedures for the Rehabilitation of Coastal Areas and Seagrass rehabilitation is carried out by: enriching
Small Islands (MMAF-Kep. No. 24/PERMEN-KP/2016) biological resources, improving habitat, and
protecting seagrasses so that they grow and develop
naturally, and are environmentally friendly
Government Regulation Conservation related to the sustainability of fish
Fisheries Resources and Habitat Conservation (PPRI resources include fish habitats: seagrass beds, coral
No. 60/ 2007) reefs and mangrove forests
 Coastal Management 7

status is one way to increase opportunities for preserving seagrass meadows. However,
there remain several problems in the regulatory framework and implementation in
Indonesia’s MPA management.
All regulations issued by the government in managing MPAs so far do not managed
in detail the sources of funds and the authority to use the budget at the provincial
level as the owner of the administrative rights of the MPAs. This condition affects the
availability of human resources in implementing the policy. Harmonization and syn-
chronization of several regulations governing MPAs management are major issues that
must be addressed immediately to support an effective management of MPAs. Therefore,
it is important to encourage enacting regulations that specifically protect seagrass
meadows as a solution to overcome pressures on seagrass meadows especially those
originating from anthropogenic pressures.

Challenge 4: Providing long-term empirical data on seagrass habitats at

national level
Proactive seagrass management strategies require empirical data repeated over time,
such as habitat extent and condition, ecosystem services, and presence of threats. The
data would enable management strategies to detect early changes in habitat condition
and to evaluate long-term trend, so that appropriate management measures can be
taken in time. However, such data is rarely available at both the national or local scale
in Indonesia, due to the lack of funding and expertise (Fortes et al. 2018; Hernawan
et al. 2021).
Development of a broad-scale seagrass monitoring program across Indonesia would
address the lack of quantitative and empirical data on seagrass habitats in Indonesia.
Considering the lack of funding and expertise (Fortes et al. 2018), the seagrass mon-
itoring programs should use a standard approach that is simple and low cost, but
accurately provides critical information about seagrass habitats for the management
authorities. Fixed transects or sites within representative meadows should be set up
for the monitoring programs. Seagrass ecological quality index (SEQI) recently devel-
oped by Hernawan et al. (2021) can be used as a framework to develop the monitoring
programs. Data collected should include, but not limited to, indicators of seagrass
resilience (e.g., species diversity and canopy cover) and ecosystem services (e.g., carbon
stocks and fisheries) (Unsworth et al. 2015)
While carbon data on seagrass meadows is important for management strategies,
there is insufficient data on seagrass carbon in Indonesia. Many studies have been
carried out by Indonesian researchers on the ability of seagrass habitats in absorbing
and storing atmospheric carbon. However, the studies were mainly focused on living
biomass which had only short-term carbon storage. On the other hand, studies dis-
cussing carbon storage in seagrass’ soil are very limited. In fact, ~97% of organic
carbon is deposited in the soil for long-term (Stankovic et al. 2021), resulting in soil
carbon as the most important part of blue carbon projects (Wylie, Sutton-Grier, and
Moore 2016). Therefore, more efforts are needed for carbon stock measurement in
seagrass soil.
Once the monitoring programs and data collection have been implemented, the
resulted data should be curated and deposited in a repository that is open and
8 H. RIFAI ET AL.

accessible by public. The importance of data repositories and open-access data to the
modern economy and science progress has been increasingly recognized (Pampel et al.
2013; Parr et al. 2019) and Indonesia has enacted several laws related to data policy,
e.g., Presidential Decree No. 39/2019 and Law No. 11/2019 supporting the establish-
ment of open-access data platform. Furthermore, data custodian for seagrasses (and
other marine ecosystems) has also been established. However, there are improvement
needed to advance the open-access data platform, particularly: (1) how seagrass data
should be best managed in a platform that provides seamless and integrative access
across different types of datasets (e.g., species occurrence data, environmental data);
(2) how we can increase the number of data providers; and (3) how to disseminate
the benefits and potential use of data to many stakeholders in Indonesia.

Challenge 5: Lack of capacity to conduct community-based management of

seagrasses
To date, one of the key developments in the study of ecosystem services (ES) conser-
vation has been the widespread promotion of market-based instruments for conservation
(Bayon 2004), including ecosystem-based management (McLeod and Leslie 2009) and
payments for ecosystem services (PES) (Salzman et al. 2018). PES is defined as a
voluntary, conditional agreement between at least one seller and one buyer over a
well-defined environment/ecosystem service or a land use presumed to produce that
service (Wunder 2006). Recently, PES is considered as one of the suitable schemes for
reconciling the conservation of coastal landscapes with the livelihood of coastal com-
munities (Thompson, Primavera, and Friess 2017).
Communities have played a crucial role in biodiversity conservation (Berkes 2007).
Community-based management (CBM) provides opportunity for effective, efficient and
socially just conservation of seagrass. This action should involve “buyers”, those who
provide incentives to the community, and “providers”, which is the community who
conserve and protect seagrass’ ES (UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme)
2020). However, there are problems in the implementation of CBM by communities.
Below we discuss issues that could contribute to the lack of capacity on seagrass
conservation and restoration implementation in the context of CBM.

Seagrasses get less attention

Even though providing many fundamental services to nature and humans, seagrasses
are still overshadowed by mangroves and coral reefs. This leads to seagrass ecosystems
getting less attention compared to other coastal ecosystems as well as for conservation
and restoration of damaged habitats. Seagrass beds provide a wide range of ecosystem
services that could be leveraged to incentivize their conservation. However, to the best
of our knowledge, there is a lack of information about PES implementation in this
ecosystem globally including in Indonesia. There are many studies on PES but mostly
focused on the protection of land forests, mangroves, and coral reefs (Locatelli et al.
2014; Bratwaite, Pascal, and Clua 2021). Recently only one project has been funded
by PES approach to protecting seagrass habitats while other coastal ecosystems already
received more (Shilland et al. 2021).
 Coastal Management 9

PES scheme is lower than selling the benefits

One of the big challenges in implementing PES scheme in seagrass conservation actions
is how to integrate conservation without compromising coastal inhabitants’ livelihoods.
PES will not work well when some providers think that the benefits they get will be
lower when PES scheme is implemented. From conservation perspective, it is important
to conserve seagrasses because of the ecosystem services they provide but from the
community perspective, this ecosystem acts as a source of their daily needs. As an
example, some providers might do not want to participate in conservation programs
as they think that the benefits they get from the resources are higher than incentives
they get from the PES scheme (Ravnborg, Daamsgard, and Raben 2007). One thing
that should be considered for PES to work properly is both provider and buyer of the
service should have a win-win opportunity which means the value of the services
offered is well understood by both of them (Fripp 2014).

Many services that seagrasses provide are not recognized or considered free by the
communities
Agreements established by many governments and inter-governmental bodies fail to
recognize the potential roles of seagrass ecosystems and their services. This is due to
the lack of attention people have regarding the benefits they provide and the lack of
esthetic appearance compared to other coastal habitats such as mangrove forests and
coral reefs (UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) 2020). The support
services associated with natural ecosystems including seagrass habitats are often greatly
undervalued by society since most are not traded in formal markets and are not easily
quantified (Vo et al. 2012). This lack of valuation on seagrass ecosystems leads to
treating seagrass services as public policy issues when entering into collective
decision-making (Robbins 2005).
PES in seagrass habitats can be initiated from carbon sequestration as many PES
schemes were targeted on climate change mitigation through carbon sequestration. In
the past, different approaches to coastal conservation have been implemented globally
including seagrass MPAs, but all of these approaches have not explicitly addressed the
carbon mitigation potential of seagrass habitats (Herr, Pidgeon, and Laffoley 2012).
Recently, carbon sequestration has been used for the implementation of Paris Agreement
to mitigate climate change (UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) 2020).
Here we highlighted that carbon sequestration is a service that could be used as a
starting point for PES in seagrass habitats based on report that carbon already has a
global market in carbon trading.

Conclusion
Indonesia has the potential to be the largest seagrass-based carbon sink as it is pro-
jected to have the largest seagrass habitats in the world. Unfortunately, the condition
and spatial extent of these valuable habitats are declining. The establishment of MPAs,
if properly managed, could provide a solution to these issues. However, several prob-
lems are still existing in the management of seagrass meadows located within Indonesia’s
10 H. RIFAI ET AL.

MPAs. To rise to these challenges, we argue that all stakeholders (e.g., government,
NGOs and local societies) need to work together to implement our recommendations.
The future of Indonesia’s seagrass beds located within MPAs depends on how we can
respond to these challenges with actions without delay.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding
This study is a part of Research Project for Capacity Development funded by COREMAP
CTI-LIPI [5942.SDA.001] 2021 with the title “Monetary Assessment of the Ecosystem Services
of Mangrove Forests and Seagrass Meadows in Capturing and Storing Carbon in Karimunjawa
National Park, Indonesia”.

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