Social Consideration for Blue Carbon Management

Abstract

Coastal ecosystems such as mangroves, seagrass beds, and salt marsh provide ecosystem services to mitigate climate change. The stored carbon is called blue carbon. To date, studies relating strategy to enhance blue carbon storage is emerging. In developing a strategy to be applied to a natural resource, it is necessary to consider how it is affected and influences its people’s lives. Meanwhile, the studies related to blue carbon management’s social aspects are lacking compared to technical and policy aspects. This paper aims to identify peer-reviewed documents that discuss social aspects in the context of blue carbon management. This study uses a semi-systematic review approach by reviewing relevant documents based on determined keyword search terms. This study suggests that livelihood, land tenure, local knowledge, and local capacity are essential to incorporate in blue carbon management. The strategy must enforce communities to hold a significant role in governance. Those aspects would help to increase community engagement to manage and support blue carbon management. However, more extensive practical studies are needed to apply strategies on the real subject to strengthen the theory in recent literature.