Impact and knowledge

Blue Carbon and Coastal Enterprise: Linking Ecosystem Restoration to Local Income

Blue Carbon Explained · 11 June 2025 · 2 min read

Region Kenya's Coast Category Blue Carbon Explained Written By Twende Green Planet Topic Benefit-Sharing

Overview

A blue carbon project that restores an ecosystem but sends its value elsewhere is not the model Twende works toward. Community benefit has to be built into a blue carbon project’s design, not added on afterward.

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Blue Carbon and Coastal Enterprise: Linking Ecosystem Restoration to Local Income

Twende approaches blue carbon as an ecosystem and development opportunity, not simply a carbon-credit activity. That means every blue carbon initiative needs community benefit and livelihood architecture designed in from the start.

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What Benefit-Sharing Looks Like in Practice:

  • Kenya's Own Working Example

Gazi Bay’s Mikoko Pamoja project directs revenue from its mangrove carbon credits into community-decided local projects through a community organisation, rather than it being captured entirely by outside project developers.

  • A Credible Model

It is the reason Mikoko Pamoja is held up internationally as a credible, community-led blue carbon model, not only an ecologically successful one.

  • Enterprise as Part of That Architecture

Coastal enterprise, from nursery supply to climate-smart cash crops to nature-based tourism, is another route by which restoration generates local income directly.

  • Community Benefit First

Twende prioritises appropriate baselines, transparent assumptions and recognised methodologies in any blue carbon work, and treats community benefit as inseparable from environmental credibility.

Blue Carbon Explained


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