Blue Carbon in Nationally Determined Contributions

Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) contain the strategies and targets of countries worldwide to mitigate and adapt to climate change. Activities to reach their goals are widespread and range from scaling-up renewable energy infrastructure to restoring carbon storing ecosystems such as forests, mangroves, or blue carbon ecosystems.

The inclusion of blue carbon ecosystems in NDCs indicates the country's intention to accelerate the conservation and restoration of mangroves, seagrass, and salt marsh. Submissions were first received in 2020 and must be revised every five years. In the interim, updates are permitted to reflect changes in national circumstances and intentions.

For conservation or community projects aiming to produce blue carbon offsets to fund their work, it's important to know if the country you're working in has mentioned blue carbon ecosystems in their NDCs, and the language surrounding them. It may be that a conservation project contributes directly to a national target related to that ecosystem, or it may be that blue carbon is counted towards a country's national carbon inventories.

Countries are colour coded from light to dark blue, representing where blue carbon and/or mangroves are mentioned in mitigation and adaptation actions or not.

The original draft map showed the results of a 21 country survey of blue carbon related information in their NDC submissions. May 2022 the draft was updated to include additional nations across the wider Caribbean region.

In October 2022 this map was updated to include NDC submissions for all countries with significant mangrove areas.

The next planned revision is 2023.

To use this map: click on "View larger map",

and allow a few seconds for the data to load, then simply click on the country of your choice and enlarge the popup summary that will appear.

Read more about NDCs and blue carbon here.

For feedback please contact info@faircarbon.org.