Coastal wetlands, including mangroves, seagrasses and tidal marshes, are critically important for coastal biodiversity and provide natural infrastructure and essential services to communities globally including coastal protection, food security, coastal livelihoods and climate adaptation and mitigation. Despite their importance, these coastal wetlands – blue carbon habitats – are some of the most threatened on Earth. As these coastal ecosystems are degraded, their carbon stores are released in globally significant quantities. Degradation and loss of these coastal ecosystems has drastic ripple effects and scaling coastal wetland conservation and restoration to reverse these losses has never been more critical.

To begin to address these gaps and opportunities in April 2024, the Cambodia's Ministry of Environment (MOE), Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF), Conservation International and the International Blue Carbon Institute held a national workshop in the coastal province of Kampot to identify gaps and explore opportunities to strengthen blue carbon conservation and restoration through science, policy, and financing pathways. At this workshop, several priorities were identified, including development of a national monitoring system, enhancing data availability, strengthening of the national policy framework for blue carbon, development of a National Blue Carbon Strategy/Roadmap, and improved planning for benefit sharing, among other priorities.

Under the CI blue climate policy that receives fund from the EROL Foundation and International Blue Carbon Institute (IBCI), CI Cambodia in the FY26 is going to conduct a study on “Conserving and Restoring Cambodia’s coastal blue habitats: Policy & Finance Analysis and Stakeholder mapping.