COS 6-7
Managing coastal ecosystem carbon storage: Tracing knowledge to action on blue carbon in a flexible policy space
The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration defines “Coastal Blue Carbon” as “the carbon that is captured by living coastal and marine organisms and stored in coastal ecosystems.” Recent evidence suggests that the organic C stocks and sequestration rates in tidal wetlands, salt marshes, coastal mangrove forests, and sea grass beds are globally significant, with rates of accumulation on the order of 100s of Tg C y-1. Recent studies have identified significant opportunities for human actions to either maintain existing C stocks, or to enhance or restore C storage in coastal ecosystems. Environmental scientists and managers have recently issued calls for better incorporation of “blue carbon” assessments into existing coastal environmental management frameworks, including coastal management plans, environmental impact statements, and possibly the state of California’s compliance offset program under its cap and trade program. In light of this emergence, this research assesses the current state of management of the ecosystem service of carbon storage in coastal systems. Specifically, through a combination of policy analysis and interviews with environmental managers and advocates, I assess the specific ecological and institutional conditions under which “early-mover” environmental managers and advocates are currently incorporating assessments of blue carbon and what barriers exist to that incorporation.
Results/Conclusions
The emphasis in the scientific literature on the carbon storage services provided by coastal ecosystems has led to piecemeal incorporation into environmental management frameworks, primarily within environmental impact statements/reports. There is a strong relationship between rates of inclusion of assessments of coastal carbon storage and the project-goals of the action whose impacts were being assessed. For example restoration management plans tend to include assessments of impacts on carbon storage assessments more frequently than impact assessments for other actions. The assessment of carbon storage in coastal ecosystems tends to be qualitative, rather than quantitative, with the exception of storage in coastal forested areas, reflecting the relative maturity of methods for assessing terrestrial carbon storage ecosystem services. Finally, data analysis reveals a typology of five distinct barriers to the incorporation of coastal carbon storage into current environmental governance approaches. Barriers in the pathway from knowledge to action were classified as (1) responsibility-constrained, (2) constrained by the politics of climate change, (3) financially or resource-constrained, (4) scientifically, technically, or data-constrained, and (5) socially- or culturally-constrained. Surprisingly, the potential for co-benefits of enhanced carbon storage, including habitat and biodiversity conservation, was a surprisingly poor predictor of incorporation of blue carbon within existing governance structures.