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BLUE CARBON WORKSHOP
OFFICIAL SIDE EVENT
UN Ocean Conference June 29, 2022
WATCH WORKSHOP
John Vermilye
Gallifrey Foundation (Moderating)
Laura Michie
Mangrove Action Project Mark Beeston
Fair Carbon
Jen Howard
Conservation
International
Mark Huxham
Edinburgh Napier
University
Leah Glass
Blue Ventures
PARTICIPANTS
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY:
On 29 June, 2022, Fair Carbon convened a Blue Carbon Workshop at the UN Ocean
Conference in collaboration with Conservation International, Edinburgh Napier University,
Blue Ventures, Mangrove Action Project, and the Gallifrey Foundation. This workshop
sought to collaboratively address the challenges in the blue carbon sector and discuss
solutions to scale project development. Workshop participants identied the following
key recommendations:
(I) Empower and engage local capacity
For local communities, undertaking conservation often means forgoing potential
income, and if communities lack viable alternatives or benets from a project, they risk
being marginalized. Meaningfully engaging communities in blue carbon projects—
through democratic decision-making, knowledge transfer, and benet sharing—
ensures communities’ buy in to the project and can steward blue carbon ecosystems
in the long-term. In addition, projects with proven social impact are attractive to
potential investors and government partners as they achieve ancillary development
goals. To develop and manage blue carbon projects, local communities need support
in navigating the accreditation process and a policy environment that enables secure
land tenure or benets.
(II) Encourage transparency
Transparency across the value chain is crucial to effective and high-integrity blue
carbon projects. Disclosure of all aspects of project development and implementation
ensures the benets claimed by credit sellers align with the actual outcomes, and
project developers may learn from and improve upon what has been done. In
addition, nancial transparency—both in the prices paid for credits and in where
revenue goes—builds the condence of investors, project proponents, and credit
buyers alike.
(III) Improve communication around nancing
Investors are increasingly prioritizing nature-based solutions to climate, and there
is ample opportunity for blue carbon projects to benet. However, developers rely
on philanthropic funding to meet core costs of a project not covered by the sale of
credits, as well as in the initial phases of project development when investors perceive
the risk as high. Project developers must learn to speak the language of nancers
and nd ways to translate projects’ social and environmental impacts into stories that
resonate. With many potential investors to choose from, developers may negotiate
higher prices or a longer return time.
SESSION NOTES:
What is the importance of social impact in blue carbon
projects?
• Mark Huxham: The ecosystem services provided by blue carbon ecosystems, such
as coastal protection, sheries provision, and carbon sequestration, are worth a lot of
money, but the only one with an established market is carbon.
• At the end of the day, these projects are not about science, they are about people,
and we should be using standards, such as Plan Vivo’s, where the social impact comes
rst. Suppose you can demonstrate to people that investing in conservation brings
benets and money. In that case, local people can decide what to invest in with that
money (e.g., water or health infrastructure) through a democratic process.
• “The reason we need to bring income is because these forests are owned and
managed by local people, and those local people need support in what they are
doing, and they need to understand why it’s directly to their benet to get involved in
mangrove conservation.”
These projects may come at the expense of lost income,
such as wood harvesting. How do we reconcile this? Is it
complex dealing with community issues?
• Mark Huxham: In the case of the Mikoko Pamoja project in Kenya, mangrove •
harvesting is illegal. Technically, enforcing the existing regulations should not impact
income. However, it is critical to the project’s success to identify the small number
of people who may be relying on harvesting and ensure they are employed by the
project or benet from it.
• The basis for democratic decision-making is built upon a foundation of legislation and
a heritage of community land management in Kenya and East Africa. Power dynamics
can be addressed intentionally (e.g., balancing gender representation).
Nature-based carbon offsets are trending at $8/tonne, but
Mikoko Pamoja is getting $20/tonne. How is that?
• Mark Huxham: Buyers of carbon offsets are looking for positive stories. Of course,
they are interested in the carbon claims, but also in achieving the SDGs, and the
welfare of local people. It is crucial to explain to buyers that if they want capacity
building, community benets, and democracy, then it is going to cost.
How can we equalize these benets across a geographic
area?
• Mark Huxham: Buyer alliances and producer alliances may help.
What is the importance of social impact in your work?
• Leah Glass: What makes a BC credit is the protection or restoration of ecosystems,
and that entails changing views. Local people depend on these blue carbon
resources for their livelihoods, so these projects need to safeguard and improve those
livelihoods. The massive amount of nance being mobilized after last COP means we
have to think about how we can best channel these nances to improve community
resilience within these ecosystems while protecting natural resources.
• Laura Michie: The communities we work with are dependent on the mangroves and
may not have access to other resources. We must work with local people to nd
alternatives and achieve buy-in from the local community from the start. Knowledge
exchange is also crucial—we learn from communities about the mangroves, and they,
in turn, learn from us what they can do to protect the mangroves while still supporting
themselves.
• Mark Beeston: One of the most signicant steps we can take is to tackle the
misconceptions about community involvement, ethical governance, and inclusivity.
It’s common for developers to focus on the jobs created, which will benet a handful
of families, but they don’t often consider how else they can help the hundreds or
thousands of people living in the landscape. How can these communities be included
in the project or raise issues they may have with it?
• “Employing people to work on a project site is a good thing, but it’s not everything;
it doesn’t equate to full social engagement, and we really need to stop pretending it
does.”
• Jen Howard: Social impact is a priority because we want to scale what we are doing.
Colombia’s project shows the social impact, highlights what is possible, and gets
attention. Doing these projects can hit many different SDG targets. Now, the
government wants to do more like it.
• “There is this recognition that these systems are important, and can benet
communities, and can build capacity, and can increase sheries and livelihoods.”
• Embedding in the community and building their capacity jointly is key. Too many
people see capacity building as holding a workshop, but more in the blue carbon
space should see the capacity building as going through the process together, and
that at the end of capacity building, there is a viable project developed.
• Leah Glass: Successful blue carbon projects require listening, understanding the
journey of developing a project for a community, and understanding how a community
needs to restore or protect a blue carbon system for their benet.
• Laura Michie: There is no single solution for restoring mangroves. You have to get on
the ground, assess the site, and hear from the community what they have tried and
need.
Do you bring in outside consultants, or can these projects
be accomplished locally? How do you engage with local
government, and how do you handle corruption or a
government that opposes the project?
• Laura Michie: Engaging with local capacity helps those projects to be socially just,
exchange knowledge, and be effective and sustainable in the long term.
• Education is an important aspect: we do restoration trainings and try to ensure the
government is interacting with the community and NGOs. We also have to build trust
with the government to understand where things have gone wrong and gure out how
to improve.
Where are the knowledge gaps in mangrove restoration?
• Mark Beeston: The dominant narrative is about planting thousands or millions of
trees. This has become so pervasive that investors now ask specically how many trees
we are going to plant, because it’s ashy, makes headlines and is easy to understand.
Sometimes the reality is not as attractive—many projects are less about planting
trees and more about enabling an area to regenerate, such as through restoring the
hydrology. This isn’t always attractive to potential investors. We want to change the
narrative to one of holistic efforts and whole-ecosystem restoration and make that
approach understandable to a wider range of people.
In capacity building, there is a difference between the
community and the national level. What does every country
need?
• Mark Huxham: Many scientists and investors are looking to apply new technologies
to a project, but it is important to realize there is often a tradeoff between using
new technology and community engagement. The more expensive or difcult a
technology is, the less likely the community will be to engage with that technology.
For mangroves, fortunately, monitoring carbon is straightforward and can be done by
people on the ground.
• In Kenya, there is a legal framework for community forest associations, local land
tenure, and benet sharing. Without that, it’s hard to see how community-based blue
carbon projects can be done. In addition, having high-prole, energetic champions of
mangroves or blue carbon ensures political changemakers are more likely to endorse
the project.
If the government owns the land, how do you guarantee
communities benet?
• Mark Huxham: With carbon projects, the community must hold the right to benet for
at least 20 years. In Kenya, they can apply for user rights, but this may be challenging
for other countries where you must delineate those rights.
How do we transfer knowledge about standards so they can
be achieved locally?
• Mark Beeston: There is a good body of scientic knowledge already around blue
carbon ecosystems and the emerging best practices for these projects. The problem
we have is that this knowledge is not easily discoverable. It’s hard to pick out what is
true, false, or self-serving for project developers in terms of the information available.
This can be overwhelming or dispiriting and is true at both ends of the value chain, not
just for project proponents but also for philanthropists, governments and funders who
want to make a difference but don’t know where to begin. At the same time, there is a
huge demand for blue carbon credits, so some companies end up buying credits that
are not robust or may even be illegal to trade in those countries.
• We have the science, knowledge, and willingness to invest, but those who want to get
started on these projects need information about what they are looking at. Often there
are few resources for those looking to develop a feasibility report or even understand
what a feasibility report is.
• Jen Howard: The other levels of local capacity are often overlooked: we need people
embedded who know blue carbon project design, not just mangrove scientists. One
example of an effort in this area is the Singapore-based blue carbon institute to build
regional capacity to undertake blue carbon projects.
Between reforestation and avoided deforestation, what are
the differences in project cost?
• Jen Howard: Every project is different. Some costs stay consistent, but the variable
costs can be large or small. I’m wary of people who claim to be able to implement a
project at a xed cost per hectare.
• Leah Glass: The opportunity costs with conservation needs to be considered—what
does a community forgo by undertaking conservation?
How do we scale blue carbon projects? To achieve 30x30,
we need a jurisdictional approach rather than just small-
scale.
• Leah Glass: The lessons learnt from REDD+ and other efforts to scale are important
for the jurisdictional approach. We do have to recognize that these are ocean
systems and thus different from terrestrial efforts in many ways. Oceans are more
often common-pool resources. What management systems can be put in place that
encourage inclusive management?
On the importance of transparency:
• Leah Glass: Transparency is the very foundation of not only good ocean governance
but also high integrity carbon credits. For credits to contribute to climate action,
transparency is necessary to understand what works and what does not. Human rights
and policy are crucial: the interest in buying or investing has raced ahead, but the
policy environment has not caught up.
• “It is really important that there are pathways to ensure that this nance is channeled
to where it needs to go, to all actors, to support the local governments which
are responsible for supporting the implementation of management plans, and to
communities that are forgoing livelihoods.”
Transparency also entails nancing transparency: there is
potential for prots to be high for developers, but that local
people are further marginalized.
• Jen Howard: This can be a challenge with corporate partners who do not want to
disclose what they have paid, but that must change.
• Kenya is a model for this, as well as Colombia. These communities planned what they
wanted the money to go towards prior to any talk of the actual nancing. So now that
the project has been implemented, the money is managed for these pre-planned
purposes and that information is public.
How do we navigate transparency beyond the nancial: in
project design, objectives, achievements, etc?
• Mark Beeston: Corporate purchasers are used to a level of opacity. But, having
visibility on the price builds condence and enables us to differentiate between
transparent high quality projects and those which are not. Scaling blue carbon projects
that have this transparency requires companies to decide that they are going to
disclose this information.
What about failed projects?
• Mark Huxham: The literature on mangrove restoration is depressing: 60-90% of
projects fail. Some of the issues here have already been discussed, such as poor
incentives (e.g. being paid per tree or hectare). Talking about these failures is an
important part of transparency.
• Carbon nance for restoration projects is critical because it is reliable, as opposed to
grants which may dry up after a few years
• Leah Glass: Everyone having access to data is key. Three key components here are:
how much carbon is being sequestered, what is the aerial extent of the ecosystem and
how is this changing over time? Access to mapping and technology can help us to
answer these questions.
On the challenges for nancing:
• Jen Howard: High quality projects require sufcient nancing. There is more money
out there now than there has ever been for nature-based solutions to climate.
However, there is a language problem: how can we translate concepts in nance
among the scientists and project developers involved in blue carbon projects?
• The concept of risk is a challenge. Investors claim they want to move the blue carbon
eld forward, then ask what the projections are for the returns. Essentially, nancers
wish to look at post-feasibility opportunities rather than getting projects going through
pre-feasibility assessment. Currently, we are reliant on philanthropic money to get from
the initial conversation to an area where an investor is comfortable putting in funding.
This is especially difcult when the cost of the carbon is currently insufcient to cover
all the project costs, and alternative income streams are needed.
• At the same time, we are in a space now where project developers can be more
choosey in nancers and have more power in negotiations. Because there are lots of
funding streams, they can look for those willing to pay an adequate price, willing to
meet core costs rst before a prot is made on the project (negotiating a longer return
time or different prices potentially), and may choose those who have already tried to
reduce emissions elsewhere, etc. We must take advantage of this environment and set
high standards now.
• Leah Glass: We have relied on philanthropic funding to get started. These
philanthropic funders resonated with us because they are looking for compelling
stories. This idea comes back to all of us speaking the same language and not losing
track of things like the important social aspect when communicating with funders.
How do we account for potential risks impacting these
projects (e.g. natural disaster)?
• Mark Huxham: This uncertainty applies to the future no matter what investment you
are talking about. But mangroves don’t burn down, making them more resilient than
many other kinds of forests, for example. The key issue is whether there is space for
them to move with sea level rise.
• Jen Howard: Some carbon standards include a buffer pool to mitigate risk. There is
also an insurance industry developing around climate projects.
Suggested citation: Beeston, M., Glass, L., Howard, J. Huxham, M., Michie, L., Vermilye, J., Wilkman, A.
“Executive Summary: Blue Carbon Workshop, United Nations Ocean Conference, June 29 2022”. Fair Carbon, Geneva, Switzerland, 2022.
faircarbon.org