The blue carbon special edition – Introduction and overview

In May 2010 the United Nations Environment Programme convened a workshop to discuss the opportunities and constraints for developing a marine carbon markets building on experience of the protocols and processes developed for the Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) programme under the United Nations Framework for Climate Change Convention (UNFCCC). The workshop also considered other approaches to realising payment for marine ecosystem services. This special edition of Ocean and Coastal Management presents papers that synthesise the main themes of that workshop and uses the definition of ‘blue carbon’ provided by Herr et al. (2012): ‘carbon stored, sequestered or released from vegetated coastal ecosystems such as tidal salt marshes, mangroves and seagrass meadows’. This definition does not include carbon stored, sequestered or released by the open ocea