Policy and Planning for Coastal Ecosystems in British Columbia through a Blue Carbon Lens

Healthy coastal ecosystems are essential for maintaining biodiversity and liveable coastal communities, providing critical habitat, water quality protection, food and medicinal plants for harvesting, lessening of coastal erosion, resilience to climate change, and flood regulation.

Perhaps less well known is that coastal ecosystems also play an important role in long-term carbon storage and sequestration. This paper looks at emerging policy opportunities and needs in Canada, and specifically British Columbia, for “blue carbon” – the carbon stored in vegetated coastal ecosystems – and how protecting blue carbon as a climate action measure aligns with coastal biodiversity protection and resilience more broadly.