Using Finance to Protect and Enhance Biodiversity While Simultaneously Sequestering Carbon

A single blue whale provides the world with services worth a minimum of $2 million over its lifetime.

When a whale dies, it has about 33 tons of captured carbon in its tissues.  Because the whale’s body sinks to the bottom of the ocean after its death, that carbon will no longer interact with the atmosphere. Over the course of a whale’s life, it sequesters even more carbon through the “whale pump” cycle: Whales feed on krill, and krill feeds on phytoplankton, which is in turn fertilized by plumes of whale excrement. Phytoplankton capture up to 30% of emitted carbon dioxide and return it to the atmosphere as oxygen. While it’s easy to make the argument for whales in terms of carbon capture, how do you express that value for people...