Regional Dialogue 08. Blue Carbon and Nature-Based Solutions: Counting Protection, Not Just Carbon

This dialogue explores how to quantify and integrate their coastal protection value (e.g., avoided flood losses) into accounts and financial decision-making, so nature-based solutions can be financed as core resilience assets, not just carbon offsets.

This Dialogue is part of the monthly Regional Dialogue on Ocean Data, Finance & Governance for Sustainable Ocean Development hosted by the Centre for Sustainable Development Reform at the University of New South Wales and Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), Malaysia.

Coastal ecosystems — mangroves, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs — are among the most productive and protective ecosystems on Earth. Yet despite their profound value as nature-based solutions, current ocean accounting frameworks predominantly capture them through only two lenses: carbon sequestration and biodiversity. A critical dimension is systematically missing.