Governing blue carbon ecosystems: a transnational environmental law analysis

Blue carbon ecosystems are recognised as a significant part of climate change mitigation. However, the continuing degradation indicates a deep failure in the existing governance arrangements. Although research on blue carbon rapidly increase, legal research on this topic remains limited. International law, domestic law, and private regulations are often examined separately, which neglects how they interact in practice. This article adopts the Transnational Environmental Law (TEL) framework to solve this gap. Our argument is that blue carbon governance cannot be understood or improved through a single legal order alone. There should be a coordinated system shaped by both state and non-state actors across different jurisdictions. Therefore, we combine normative legal analysis with a comparative study of four typical jurisdictions, i.e., Australia, the European Union, China, and Kenya. They are selected to represent different governance models. The results show that while the fragmentation of international law creates serious governance gaps, it also promotes diverse, bottom-up policy innovation in various countries. Through verifying the adaptability of TEL theory to global blue carbon governance, we propose a multi-level framework for blue carbon governance.