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Blue carbon describes the carbon sequestration potential and ecosystem services associated
with coastal ecosystems including mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes. In countries
without established marine protected areas or active restoration efforts, blue carbon
may serve as a mechanism for preventing coastal destruction, which increases shoreline
vulnerability and negatively affects the species native to these habitats. Additional
benefits of blue carbon include increased national and international climate change
mitigation efforts. Blue carbon works by creating markets that shift a country’s economic
incentive away from destructive activities toward protecting their critical ecosystems.
This paper evaluates the demand for information and current challenges facing three
Global Environment Facility Blue Forests pilot projects in order to provide guidelines
for the development of a blue carbon “toolkit.”
A user-friendly toolkit aimed at project managers and field ecologists would help
them to show various approaches to blue carbon, to determine which protocols best
fit the social and political conditions of their site, and to identify field work
that may be required to pursue the chosen protocol. Blue Forests demonstration projects
in Abu Dhabi, Ecuador, and Madagascar, were analyzed in addition to an extensive literature
review to understand the most functional approach to organizing blue carbon resources
in a toolkit.
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