Defining Blue Carbon

One particular challenge facing potential blue carbon ecosystem (BCE) in open-water is the lack of an appropriate policy context. Blue carbon as a concept, and thus BCEs management as one natural climate solution, has thus arisen at a moment in time when connecting the biosphere to climate mitigation actions is gaining traction within international policy discussions. The carbon sequestration from intact wetlands has been seen as a small but positive carbon removal from the atmosphere in the context of near-term global climate mitigation, and at rates for which developing economic instruments was determined challenging. Under the Paris Climate Agreement, 58 countries, a high proportion of maritime nations, recognized BCEs in some form under their Nationally Determined Contributions, their policy commitments to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the context of climate policy frameworks, blue carbon has been taken to represent the carbon accumulating in vegetated, tidally influenced coastal ecosystems such as tidal forests, tidal marshes, and intertidal to subtidal seagrass meadows.