Blue carbon (BC) ecosystems — coastal and marine habitats such as mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes — have gained significant attention as nature-based climate solutions with immense potential to sequester carbon, mitigate greenhouse gas emissions, and simultaneously yield ecological and economic benefits. However, despite burgeoning research addressing their ecological services and mitigation capacity, the social justice dimensions embedded within BC projects, particularly the tenure and rights of Indigenous and local communities, remain inadequately addressed by many stakeholders. This gap could threaten the equitable implementation and ultimate success of BC initiatives worldwide.
Recent comprehensive analyses highlight an urgent need to reconceptualize how tenure and rights are integrated within blue carbon governance. While social justice scholars, Indigenous representatives, and civil society actors have raised alarms concerning the risks of rights erosion, marginalization, and diminished self-determination in BC projects, many governments, international organizations, private sector entities, and even some BC standards frameworks have not fully incorporated these critical concerns. This dissonance between environmental and social priorities underscores the need for holistic governance models that authentically incorporate local and Indigenous tenure perspectives rather than treating tenure merely as a procedural prerequisite for ecological objectives.
Fundamentally, divergent narratives emerge around tenure’s role in BC projects. A considerable proportion of actors — including private companies and certain national governments — emphasize tenure clarity as a necessary condition for effective carbon ecosystem management and conservation. In this view, tenure functions instrumentally to optimize ecosystem services and carbon sequestration outcomes. Conversely, social justice advocates frame tenure security as a paramount end in itself, emphasizing the necessity of safeguarding community autonomy and rights against exploitation. This dual framing reveals an intrinsic tension between ecological-economic agendas and human rights-centered approaches that must be carefully navigated.
Strikingly, across these divergent claims, there is consensus that BC projects have the potential to exacerbate or ignite resource conflicts, complicating tenure security rather than resolving it. Cases such as Australia’s native title system illuminate how well-intentioned frameworks can inadvertently fuel divisions within Indigenous communities unless there is genuine empowerment of local agency and leadership. The persistence of such vulnerabilities calls for a critical interrogation of BC projects’ social dimensions to identify and mitigate risks, ensuring communities participate as empowered partners rather than passive stakeholders.
Central to reconciling these tensions is the fundamental recognition and respect for Indigenous conceptions of tenure. Western legalistic paradigms typically frame tenure as property rights over natural resources, commodifying ecosystems and facilitating extractive use. This commodification often clashes with Indigenous worldviews, which emphasize reciprocal relationships and stewardship embedded within holistic understandings of nature. Market-based mechanisms that prioritize profitability run the risk of undermining Indigenous cultural values, livelihoods, and autonomy, raising concerns about neo-colonial dynamics within climate solutions.
The implications are vast, considering only a minority—approximately nine percent—of global market-based BC projects operate under community control, with the private sector and governmental entities dominating project leadership. While recent years have witnessed increased attention to social co-benefits and the emergence of voluntary community-specific standards, these advances remain nascent. The challenge lies in capturing the plurality of realities around nature governance, moving beyond neoliberal frameworks toward inclusive models that respect diverse epistemologies and tenure systems as foundational to equitable climate action.
Moreover, BC guidance must embrace the full and contextualized “bundle of rights” that characterize tenure relationships, encompassing not only access and management rights but also critical dimensions such as exclusion, withdrawal, alienation, and transformation rights. Analysis reveals that most BC standards disproportionately emphasize management and access, often conflating community rights with imposed responsibilities for project implementation. This narrow focus risks eroding community autonomy and undermining genuine decision-making power, limiting the ability of rightsholders to meaningfully engage or negotiate the terms of their participation.
Such constrained conceptualizations reflect a broader methodological issue where tenure becomes instrumentalized toward specific BC objectives—mitigation or commodification—thereby sidelining the complexities of social agency and governance. Without a comprehensive understanding and operationalization of the full suite of tenure rights, BC projects risk perpetuating inequities and community disenfranchisement, ultimately jeopardizing both social justice and ecological resilience.
Importantly, tenure rights are not peripheral concerns but rather foundational obligations clearly articulated within numerous international legal instruments, including conventions, treaties, and human rights frameworks. Yet many global instruments relevant to tenure remain insufficiently integrated into BC policy and practice. Indeed, recent examinations identify at least six substantive international instruments endorsing tenure recognition and respect that have yet to permeate BC guidance fully. This gap raises significant concerns regarding the ability of BC projects to meet established international standards on tenure security and rights protection.
To advance tenure recognition effectively, BC governance must evolve to reflect these international obligations explicitly. Doing so entails updating policies, guidance documents, and standards to embed tenure rights as minimum standards, coupled with mechanisms to ensure transparency and accountability. Concurrently, cross-disciplinary education and capacity building among BC stakeholders—including biophysical scientists, restoration practitioners, private investors, and policymakers—are critical to cultivating a shared understanding of tenure complexities and socio-cultural dynamics.
Equally vital is the establishment of partnerships that elevate Indigenous and local communities as equal partners in BC projects. Such collaborations demand respect for cultural protocols, authority structures, and international norms such as free, prior, and informed consent. Only through these processes can the distinct needs and rights of marginalized groups, including women and socially vulnerable populations, be adequately accounted for in BC decision-making, ensuring that climate mitigation efforts do not inadvertently perpetuate historical injustices.
In sum, blue carbon represents a promising frontier for climate mitigation and ecological restoration, yet the success of these initiatives hinges not only on their biophysical impact but also on how tenure and rights frameworks are conceived and enacted. Addressing unresolved tensions surrounding tenure claims, embracing Indigenous worldviews, expanding recognition of the complete bundle of rights, and embedding international obligations can collectively transform BC governance toward justice-centered, effective solutions. This multidimensional approach is indispensable in ensuring that blue carbon initiatives contribute equitably and sustainably to global climate goals.
Without such a paradigmatic shift, blue carbon projects risk replicating patterns of exclusion, disempowerment, and cultural erosion. The challenge before policymakers, practitioners, and researchers is to develop and adopt governance frameworks that prioritize human rights alongside ecological effectiveness, aligning climate action with broader visions of social equity and environmental stewardship. This holistic perspective will be vital as blue carbon continues scaling globally amid intensifying pressures to address climate change through nature-based solutions.
Such comprehensive transformation will require sustained political will, multi-level coordination, and grassroots leadership. The climate crisis demands urgent and innovative pathways, yet the pathways must be just and inclusive, recognizing that climate and social justice are fundamentally intertwined. Only by respecting tenure and the multiplicity of rights that define community relationships with their environments can blue carbon achieve its full promise as a nature-based climate solution that serves people and the planet alike.
Subject of Research:
The study investigates the interplay between tenure rights and blue carbon (BC) project governance, emphasizing the need to respect Indigenous and local community rights within BC climate mitigation efforts.
Article Title:
Respecting tenure and the bundle of rights in blue carbon guidance.
Article References:
Lawless, S., Cohen, P.J., Dudayev, R. et al. Respecting tenure and the bundle of rights in blue carbon guidance. Nat. Clim. Chang. (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41558-026-02651-8
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