Blue Carbon Futures: Are our Legal and Policy Frameworks up to the Task?

Wetlands, mangroves, saltmarshes and seagrass pay a critical role in storing carbon, buffering storm surge, sea-level rise and erosion, filtering pollutants from land runoff, and combating marine wildlife habitat loss. Effective management and restoration of these ‘blue carbon’ ecosystems is increasingly recognised in international and scientific circles as a nature-based solution to climate change, with a range of environmental, economic and social co-benefits.

The proponents of blue carbon believe that a combination of regulatory controls and economic incentives (including in compliance and voluntary markets for carbon and biodiversity credits) can be used to support shifts away from unsustainable marine and coastal management and use commensurate with the critical and threatened existence of blue carbon ecosystems. There is growing scientific consensus about the varying ways and rates at which blue carbon ecosystems store and release atmospheric carbon, necessary for the design of any regulatory or market system. However, the design and implementation of legal and policy frameworks has been slow to follow. This is partly because there are significant legal uncertainties to confront in the design of blue carbon policy frameworks, especially in determining who has the lawful right to undertake blue carbon activities and benefit from carbon credits.

In settler-colonial contexts, such as in Aotearoa New Zealand, Indigenous and First Nations peoples have longstanding rights, interests, and relationships in marine and coastal areas, although their perspectives and positions are not always reflected in policy development discussions led by government, environmental, philanthropic, and financial sectors. In this presentation I will discuss the results of a multi-jurisdictional study of the legal challenges and opportunities for designing legal and policy frameworks for blue carbon, specifically concerning complex land and resource tenure and resource planning and consenting requirements. This research confirmed a critical need to centre justice and equity in the design of legal and policy frameworks for blue carbon, across all stages and scales, in order to avoid repeating the colonial injustices of the past.