WIREDGOV

Plan setting out how consideration of blue carbon habitats is being integrated into marine policies and priority actions to address key evidence gaps.

Introduction

Scotland’s extensive marine and coastal environment provides unique opportunities to support efforts to address climate change. Habitats like saltmarsh, seagrass, seabed sediments, and kelp and other seaweeds can act to naturally take up and, in some cases, store carbon. These are Scotland’s blue carbon habitats. Some of these natural carbon stores contain significant stores of carbon that have accumulated over long timescales, sometimes containing carbon that has been trapped and stored for thousands of years or more. Supporting blue carbon habitats to help prevent the release of this stored carbon is important, while enhancement and restoration of habitats may enable additional carbon to be taken up from the atmosphere. In doing so, blue carbon habitats can contribute to the Scottish Government’s strategy for responding to climate change, as well as for biodiversity loss.

This action plan is focused on saltmarsh, seagrass, seabed sediments, and kelp and other seaweeds as it is these habitats that have the most potential for climate change mitigation to help to contribute to net zero goals. Despite the potential for climate change mitigation, these blue carbon habitats are not included in the UK greenhouse gas inventory so their direct contribution to net zero cannot be formally accounted for at the present time. There are evidence gaps that still need to be addressed before they can be included in the inventory. While the scientific understanding of each habitat varies, more recent insights into their natural carbon storage properties are now driving policy to ensure this role is valued and recognised alongside well-understood biodiversity and wider ecosystem service benefits. For example, coastal blue carbon habitats play an important role in climate change adaptation by providing coastal protection against flooding and storm surges.

Currently, only saltmarsh and seagrass are recognised internationally as being able to contribute to climate change mitigation through human intervention to protect, restore, or enhance them. In the context of Scotland’s overall annual emissions, the greenhouse gas abatement potential of these habitats is low. Yet, collectively, Scotland’s blue carbon habitats represent important natural carbon stores. There is therefore an emphasis in this action plan on what is being done to protect these long-term natural stores of carbon to prevent avoidable greenhouse gas emissions that may occur if habitats are damaged, degraded, or destroyed.

The purpose of this action plan is to set out how the Scottish Government will work to integrate the latest evidence on blue carbon into the policy landscape on nature conservation and climate change and the actions that will be taken to address key evidence gaps. In doing so, it also provides an explanation of the concept of blue carbon, an overview of the existing policy landscape, and then provides details for each of the blue carbon habitats being considered.

Preparation of this action plan has been overseen by the Scottish Blue Carbon Forum (SBCF) Steering Committee, comprising representation from the Scottish Government and NatureScot, and an independent chair from the University of St Andrews. Publication of this plan fulfils Scottish Government commitments set out in the Scottish National Adaptation Plan 3 and the Scottish Biodiversity Strategy Delivery Plan 2024-2030. This plan contributes to the Scottish Government’s broader strategic approach to achieve Net Zero by 2045, to ensure resilience to climate change, to become nature positive by 2030, and to restore and regenerate biodiversity by 2045. It also contributes to the realisation of the outcomes of the Blue Economy Vision for Scotland, in particular to ensure that Scotland’s marine ecosystems are healthy and functioning. The actions aimed at addressing evidence gaps also deliver Scottish Government’s commitments as a member of the UK Blue Carbon Evidence Partnership (UKBCEP).

This action plan is guided by a vision and set of objectives. As many of the actions involve addressing evidence gaps, they are designed to be implemented over the next three years until 2028/29. After this point, the available evidence will be reviewed to inform the next steps.

Blue Carbon Action Plan Vision

Scotland’s blue carbon habitats are healthy and resilient, enabling them to reach full potential in mitigating climate change, alongside their recognised role in supporting climate change adaptation and biodiversity. Robust evidence is available to understand and demonstrate this.

Objectives

To achieve the vision, this action plan supports the Scottish Government and NatureScot to:

1. ensure the latest evidence on blue carbon is integrated into upcoming Scottish Government policy initiatives, where appropriate
2. continue to build the evidence base for blue carbon habitats to address key knowledge gaps and support policy development, implementation, and evaluation

Structure of this plan

This action plan is structured as follows:

• section 1 outlines the background and context to this action plan
• section 2 provides a general overview of blue carbon
• section 3 provides a high-level overview of the existing policy landscape and highlights relevant upcoming policy developments
• section 4 details the different blue carbon habitats and their known distribution in Scottish waters, setting out actions to address key evidence gaps
• section 5 sets out the approach to monitoring and reporting on the actions contained in this plan, commitments to ongoing cross-UK and international collaboration on blue carbon, and summarises all actions

A glossary of key terms and references is also provided at the end of this document.

Click here for the full press release