Seagrass (SG) meadows are highly productive environments able to store a considerable amount of carbon in the underlying sediments. For this reason, they are often reported in literature as systems potentially able to draw down anthropogenic CO2 emissions and have been proposed as nature-based solution to help fighting climate change (e.g. Macreadie et al 2021). This has led some countries to include SG protection and restoration in their Nationally Determined Contribution to achieve the goals set by the Paris agreement(Krause et al 2025). However, high net primary production and burial rate per unit area are not enough to provide evidence of anthropogenic CO2 removal and the effectiveness of these ecosystems to fight climate change is still object of debate (Johannessen and Christian 2023). Here we review the climate change mitigation potential of SG and their capability to offset CO2 emitted from fossil fuel, using as case study the Mediterranean Sea. This basin is populated by SG species able to bury among the highest amount of carbon per unit area in the whole ocean (Fourqurean et al 2012). More specifically, this perspective critically analyses the following aspects: (1) the significance of the carbon stored in SG sediments with respect to current carbon emissions; (2) the consequence of protecting and restoring SG in the context of the climate neutrality target set by the EU Green Deal, and (3) the potential of SG for anthropogenic CO2 drawdown versus their role in mitigating the impacts of climate change.

POLIMENE Luca;  DE AZEVEDO E COSTA Ana;  MACIAS MOY Diego;  STIPS Adolf; 

2026-06-16

IOP PUBLISHING LTD

JRC146124

1748-9326 (online),   

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ae7a93,    https://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/JRC146124,   

10.1088/1748-9326/ae7a93 (online),