Developing Guidelines for a Blue Carbon Toolkit

Abstract

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.