Creating a Toolkit for Implementing Blue Carbon Projects

Abstract

Blue Carbon is a relatively new term, used to refer to the biological processes by which carbon is stored in coastal ecosystems. There has been a rapid expansion of the literature about blue carbon, particularly as it relates to climate change mitigation activities. The experience of initial blue carbon projects highlighted the need for a centralized source of information. In response our client, LabEX Mer, asked our group to create a toolkit that would be readily accessible to project managers with a broad array of institutional capacities. The toolkit aims to help project managers sort through the available information quickly and effectively. We chose to use an open-source Google Drive as the platform for our toolkit. Our decisions were informed by the work of two of our team members who travelled to Ecuador to conduct fieldwork and input from our client. Summary analyses about blue carbon policy and markets were also created.