Investing in Mangroves 2025

jurisdictions to resolve mangrove land-tenure issues. These issues could be solved more swiftly if government agencies aligned to clearly define responsibility over jurisdictions relevant to mangroves and invited stakeholders with interests in those jurisdictions into planning processes. Best practice should be followed to navigate the complexity of coastal areas Intervening in coastal areas for conservation and restoration activities is complex for a number of reasons. There is the potential for overlapping terrestrial and marine-based regulatory jurisdictions, which can lead to disjointed government strategy and policy for mangrove conservation and restoration. Coastal ecosystems are home to diverse stakeholders with potentially conflicting economic interests, presenting a significant challenge for governance. The hydrology of mangrove systems poses challenges in restoring ecosystem functions. The resulting complexity of coastal interventions therefore requires integrated cross-sectoral approaches and multifaceted community-led development projects. These projects must also consider the necessary balance of people, nature and climate factors that address underlying drivers of degradation.59 Datasets capturing local environmental, socio- economic, cultural and regulatory factors could help facilitate this work, but are largely unavailable for blue carbon ecosystems and coastal economies.60 To ensure that mangrove-positive projects consider all the complexities inherent in coastal areas, best practice guidelines should be followed, such as the Global Mangrove Alliance’s Best Practice Guidelines for Mangrove Restoration, as well as robust project- level carbon measurement methodologies such as those in the Blue Carbon Initiative’s Coastal Blue Carbon manual for assessing carbon stocks and emissions factors in mangroves.61 Stakeholders should coordinate to enable action and mitigate risks Effective coordination and communication between public, private and philanthropic stakeholders at various levels is necessary to establish the required infrastructure for successful and scalable mangrove- positive solutions. Stakeholder alignment and data sharing are important for proper risk assessment. To ensure that projects are of high quality, relevant stakeholders must align on a shared vision and principles, such as the High-Quality Blue Carbon Principles and Guidance, and establish effective learning and knowledge exchange platforms to support each other’s capacities in engaging in mangrove-positive action at varying levels. Investors’ expectations should align with local needs for project success The local needs of blue carbon projects are unique to each context and are critical for the success of that project, due to the specific social, environmental, cultural and economic characteristics of each locality. To ensure the effective scaling-up of mangrove-positive solutions, it is essential to elevate and integrate these localized needs into investment policies and due diligence processes. However, the uniformity of project criteria that investors typically demand to reach economies of scale does not align well with blue carbon projects that need to gain the trust of Indigenous Peoples and local communities, as well as to ensure that project leadership builds on their knowledge and experience. As a result, financiers looking to invest in mangroves must adjust their expectations and investment processes to allow for this increased level of localization and differentiation compared to investments into conventional solutions. The localized needs of blue carbon projects can be aggregated and mainstreamed through processes such as “fractal scalability” – defined as “a way of achieving project ‘scale’ that demonstrates how a combination of results from a larger number of smaller, localized projects can deliver more value than a singular, larger, generalized project.”62 One way to protect localized needs is to set caps on the scale or land area that a project can cover within its impact principles, otherwise projects can become so big that they lose the unique values of specific localities. Mangrove-positive markets and investment approaches must be kept regionally relevant, with the importance of local partners reflected throughout investment processes to ensure projects remain faithful to local needs, accessibility, integrity and ultimate delivery. Investors should leverage expertise to mitigate reputational risk There have been a number of challenges to both the integrity and investment value of carbon- and nature-positive projects supported by private capital through global media,63 as well as challenges to the credibility of climate and nature solutions such as mangroves through misinformation and disinformation campaigns. As a result, investors are hesitant to engage with climate and nature projects, due to the reputational risk of making sustainability claims.64 To mitigate this risk, corporations can leverage resources that provide relevant expertise such as the High-Quality Blue Carbon Practitioner’s Guide, partner with organizations such as the Global Mangrove Alliance, and consider collaborating with high-quality project pipelines such as those associated with initiatives like the Mangrove Breakthrough, backed by the UN’s High Level Climate Champions (see Box 4).65 Mangrove conservation and restoration projects are not being designed in a commercially investable manner, due to a lack of clarified revenue streams and understanding of investability criteria at the various stages of project maturity. Investing in Mangroves: The Corporate Playbook 12