How the Current Blue Carbon Project Standards hinder Mangrove Conservation and Restoration

The Voluntary Carbon Market (VCM) relies on a handful of validated standards, each one counting with a suite of methodologies, tools, and templates. In the past few years, Blue Carbon Ecosystems (BCEs), most prominently mangrove ecosystems, have gained a lot of attention due to their remarkable capacity to store much higher amounts of carbon than terrestrial forests. Nevertheless, mangroves may offer more complexities to conservation and restoration that range from sea-level rise to human-induced encroachment. Carbon standards have much improved their thoroughness so the attend to those complexities, especially regarding the contribution of and impact on communities and the hydrological and sedimentological requirements for a healthy ecosystem. The higher level of demands for a responsibly established project usually represents higher initial costs, e.g., feasibility study (FS) and project development document (PDD), and a longer period for revenue from the investor’s perspective. This is perceived as a negative scenario due to the market’s nature of rapid profit and revenue, thus, pushing blue carbon projects to a halt even before implementation. Here, we discuss what are the key-factors representing a conflict of interest between conservation, restoration, and VCM implementors, and make recommendations on how to overcome such dispute to achieve the promotion of BCEs around the globe.