Lawless, Sarah, Cohen, Philippa J., Dudayev, Rayhan, Evans-Illidge, Elizabeth, Lovelock, Catherine E., Muir, Bob, Ogier, Emily, Pradhan, Sisir, and Morrison, Tiffany H. (2026) Respecting tenure and the bundle of rights in blue carbon guidance. Nature Climate Change. (In Press)

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Abstract

Blue carbon (BC) projects are proposed in the territories of coastal communities, small-scale fishers and Indigenous peoples, yet how the tenure security of rightsholders is conveyed or protected remains uncertain. Here, by analysing 122 BC guidance documents (scientific, policy and technical), we examine the claims, obligations and interpretations of tenure. The documents reveal overlapping and/or competing claims about interactions between BC and tenure rights, ranging from rights-eroding to rights-securing. Despite increased openness to different forms of tenure, only a subset of tenure rights consistently receive emphasis. Six core international obligations to tenure (including the Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention) are overlooked. Ambiguity surrounding tenure implications, coupled with disregard for global obligations and narrow rights interpretation, exposes rightsholders to potential land and resource dispossession, and exclusion from benefits. To rectify this, BC guidance must adopt a more comprehensive view of tenure, engage with international standards and rights experts, and ensure accountability to rightsholders.

Item ID:	92304
Item Type:	Article (Research - C1)
ISSN:	1758-6798
Copyright Information:	Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. © The Author(s) 2026
Date Deposited:	09 Jun 2026 23:28
FoR Codes:	41 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES > 4104 Environmental management > 410406 Natural resource management @ 20% 44 HUMAN SOCIETY > 4406 Human geography > 440699 Human geography not elsewhere classified @ 80%
SEO Codes:	19 ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY, CLIMATE CHANGE AND NATURAL HAZARDS > 1902 Environmental policy, legislation and standards > 190208 Rights to environmental and natural resources (excl. water allocation) @ 100%
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