Why Value ‘Blue Carbon’?

This chapter intends examine the potential of blue carbon storage ecosystem services to contribute to a healthy climate and to support future protection for the coastal and marine habitats. Coastal ecosystems store ‘blue carbon’ but this provision is currently not protected by any international climate agreement or mechanism. Using scenario analysis, the chapter aims to develop a better understanding of the measurement and valuation of carbon stored and sequestered in coastal and marine ecosystems. Case studies of saltmarshes and seagrasses in England and Europe provide the main focus. Two main scenarios are presented. In one scenario, current environmental protection policies continue to be implemented. In a second scenario, a combination of factors (e.g. less environmental protection, more significant climate change impacts and increased marine pollution) lead to large habitat loss. The loss may be sufficient to lead to the functional extinction of some seagrass species, and hence the services they provide. The on-going debate about the definition of stock and flows of ecosystem services both in biophysical and economic terms and their related valuation issues are also explored based on a carbon cycle example.