The Minister of Sustainability and Environment of the Government of Andalusia, Catalina García, presented this Friday, at the Casa de los Toruños Visitor Center of the Bahía de Cádiz Natural Park, the ‘Blue carbon project for the capture of CO₂ in the Bahía de Cádiz Natural Park’. A pioneering action in Spain that will take place in the tidal marshes of the northern bank of the Guadalete River.
The Bay of Cádiz blue carbon project will be developed on an area of 155 hectares of tidal marsh on the northern bank of the Guadalete River. Its objective is to restore the hydrotidal functionality of the ecosystem, allowing the natural development of the vegetation characteristic of this environment and generating a highly efficient carbon sink.
The forecasts point to a capture of more than 32,000 tons of CO₂, with an estimated unit cost of around 15 euros per ton, well below the average values of the voluntary market, which are between 70 and 100 euros per ton. Catalina Garcia, Minister of Sustainability and Environment of the Government of Andalusia, has highlighted that “the planned absorption capacity is equivalent to planting around 160,000 trees of the most common species in Andalusia, and to achieve a similar volume of capture through reforestation, more than double the area would be needed, about 2.3 times the size of the project.”
During the event, the counselor signed the collaboration agreement with the representatives of the Iberostar Hotels & Resorts companies (Federico Cardona, Blue Foods Global Leader); Navantia (Alberto Cervantes, director of the Corvette and Maritime Action Vessels Business and director of the San Fernando shipyard); Moeve (Olalla del Río, director of Sustainability and Energy Transition); Málaga Metro (Fernando Lozano, general director) and Eulen (Joaquín Rodríguez de Felipe, Environment Manager of the Southern Zone), who make up the consortium promoting this initiative, the result of public-private collaboration and the common commitment to a development model based on sustainability, innovation and environmental responsibility.
Also present were the Secretary General of Environment and Climate Change, María López Sanchís; the managing director of the Andalusian Environment and Water Agency (AMAYA), Javier de Torre; the general director of Environmental Sustainability and Circular Economy, Carmen Jiménez; the territorial delegate in the province of Cádiz, Óscar Curtido, as well as representatives of the University of Cádiz, among other authorities.
Natural heritage
The Bahía de Cádiz Natural Park is a protected space that combines tidal marshes, salt marshes, dunes and tidal channels, and represents a privileged enclave for the conservation of biodiversity and the mitigation of the effects of climate change. During the event, heThe counselor has emphasized that “this action will bring life back to a degraded marsh and will turn environmental recovery into an engine of knowledge and awareness.” Furthermore, he added that “it is an opportunity to bring the benefits of coastal ecosystems and their essential role in the fight against climate change to citizens.”
The project has the collaboration of leading scientific institutions, such as the Blue Carbon Laboratory of the University of Cádiz, the Guadalete Hydrographic Demarcation, and experts from the Spanish Group of Experts on Blue Carbon Ecosystems (G3ECA), which guarantees its technical solidity and its potential as a replicable model in other areas of the Andalusian coast.