Depicting Mangrove’s Potential as Blue Carbon Champion in Indonesia

Abstract

AbstractIn June 2019, during the UNFCCC meeting, Indonesia pledged to reduce carbon emissions by adopting “blue carbon.” The term refers to the role of the vegetated coastal ecosystem (mangroves, seagrass, brackish, and phytoplankton ecosystems) to mitigate anthropogenic CO2 emission. Indonesia has the most extensive coverage of mangroves in the world. Its mangrove forest contains 3.14 billion metric tons of carbon. However, continuing and alarming destruction has consequences in obstructing the current carbon emission reduction and climate change mitigation effort. News media articles on ecosystem services are considered critical information for public opinion building processes because media provides and creates images and supports the initiative. This chapter aims to seek the answer to the following research questions: how is blue carbon covered in Indonesia’s leading online media outlet and what does this coverage imply for the public opinion building process regarding the blue carbon initiative? In the past decade, news coverage on mangrove ecosystem services was successfully conveying tsunami risk reduction messages. This study will investigate online news media coverage to analyze mangrove’s existing media representation as a “blue carbon champion” using qualitative content analysis. Online media coverage in the Indonesian language was collected from June 2019 to February 2021 under the term “karbon biru” (English: blue carbon) and “blue carbon.” The sample consists of articles from national online media outlets which scraped from Google News. The result is likely to show how news coverage on “blue carbon” represents a potential risk for the societal acceptance of blue carbon initiatives. As society is increasingly reliant upon the media to inform them, public opinion building processes regarding mangroves’ potential for a “blue carbon champion” required a novel discourse. Heavy coverage on mangroves as a carbon sink and frequent scientific jargon usage associated with blue carbon need to be reshaped.KeywordsMangroveBlue carbonContent analysisPublic perceptionEcosystem services