REVIEW article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Solutions for Ocean and Coastal Systems
This article is part of the Research TopicBlue Carbon and Sustainable Development: Bridging Ecological and Policy Landscapes.View all 8 articles
Embedding Ecosystem-based Adaptive Management in Blue Carbon Markets: A Conceptual Framework and Operational Roadmap for China
Provisionally accepted
- 1National Marine Data and Information Service, Tianjin, China
- 2Zhuhai Marine Center of the Ministry of Natural Resources, Zhuhai, China
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Coastal "blue carbon" ecosystems are increasingly targeted for carbon finance, yet persistent gaps in market integrity, governance, and long-term stewardship limit their contribution to climate goals. This review examines how ecosystem-based adaptive management (EAM) can be used as an operational bridge between blue-carbon ecology and carbon trading mechanisms, with a particular focus on China's emerging market. We synthesize international standards and methodologies, analyse governance archetypes from Kenya, Australia, the United States, and Japan, and review recent Chinese methodologies and pilot projects across mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows. On this basis, we map core EAM functions—iterative planning, implementation, monitoring, and adjustment—onto key carbon-market integrity requirements (additionality, permanence, Monitoring–Reporting–Verification, and leakage control) and onto investor needs such as risk assessment, buffers, and co-benefit recognition. The analysis identifies common integrity challenges for blue-carbon crediting, ecosystem-specific financial and technical constraints, and a set of transferable remedies, including digital and stratified monitoring, dynamic buffers and insurance, and participatory safeguards and benefit-sharing. Building on these insights, we develop a finance-aware integration framework and an operational roadmap for China that links adaptive indicators and thresholds to methodology design, verification cadence, issuance logic, buffer management, registry transparency, and performance-linked financing. The framework clarifies how embedding EAM in blue-carbon standards and trading architecture can reduce uncertainty, raise credit quality, and support premium pricing while sustaining ecological performance and delivering coastal protection, biodiversity, and livelihood co-benefits under China's "30·60" climate targets.
Keywords: Blue carbon ecosystems1, Carbonmarkets3, China7, Climate mitigation6, Coastal governance5, Ecosystem-based adaptive management (EAM)2, Market integrity4
Received: 10 Sep 2025; Accepted: 15 Dec 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Zheng, Lu, Wang, Tao, Liu and Ai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Wenhai Lu
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