Seagrass loving Jessie represents SA at UN Climate Change Conference

Salt Rock local and Stellenbosch University student, Jessie Yuill (22) represented the country and her university at the 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Spain last December.

She joined youth delegates from the Global Alliance of Universities on Climate (GAUC) who want to keep the youth involved in climate negotiations. Stellenbosch University was the only South African university that took part.

The former Ashton International College Ballito student completed her Bachelor of Science Honours in biodiversity and ecology last year and will complete a masters (MSc) in the same field.

She is passionate about preserving the planet for future generations and hopes to contribute towards this aim through her research into seagrass as a nature-based solution to climate change, due to its immense potential as a blue carbon storage.

“An acre of seagrass can sequester up to 335kg of carbon annually,” she said.

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The Global Carbon Project (GCP) in December published its annual analysis of trends in the global carbon cycle. The GCP expected global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industry to reach 36.8 billion tonnes in 2019.

“Seagrass absorbs and stores up to 35 times more carbon than a rainforest of the same per hectare coverage.”

But seagrass is declining globally.

“South African seagrass meadows have declined by 23 percent since 2003 and globally only cover about five percent of the ocean floor,” she said.

Known commonly as ‘killer algae’, Caulerpa taxifolia is taking over the habitat of seagrass and causing the death of many herbivores that relied on seagrass and cannot eat the algae. Over-fishing also negatively affects seagrass.

Jessie will continue her research during her MSc, focusing on the South African coastline she hopes to find areas where seagrass meadows could be restored.

Jessie is also an ambassador for a new climate change interactive program developed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She will be teaching this program to undergraduate students at Stellenbosch.

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