Institutionalizing Blue Carbon Markets: Lessons from China and Implications for Developing Countries Through Complex Adaptive Systems

Unofficial AI-generated summary based on the public title and abstract. Not an official translation.

🔬研究者:Provides a novel theoretical framework combining CAS, property rights, and IAD for analyzing carbon market institutions, especially applicable to nature-based solutions.

🏢実務担当者:Offers practical insights for designing blue carbon projects and navigating institutional gaps in developing countries, with lessons on rule adjustment and stakeholder coordination.

🏛政策担当者:Highlights the importance of adaptive institutional design for blue carbon markets, emphasizing the need for locally adapted rule systems and iterative governance.

As a crucial nature-based climate change solution, the realization of blue carbon’s value is primarily impeded by three interrelated obstacles in developing nations: a weak scientific foundation, fragmented market structures across different levels, and the absence of dedicated institutional frameworks. This study focuses on the institutional bottlenecks hindering the marketization of blue carbon in developing countries. By integrating Complex Adaptive Systems (CASs), Coase’s Theory of Property Rights, and the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework, we constructed a theoretical framework encompassing five dimensions: transaction objects, transaction participants, transaction markets, transaction rules, and benefit distributions. This framework was validated through an empirical analysis of the blue carbon practice in Ningbo, China. The research identified three critical stages in Ningbo’s governance trajectory: initial founding, synergistic stagnation, and iterative upgrading. The core determinant of governance success or failure lies in the capacity to continuously optimize this five-dimensional rule system through a combination of “top-down regulation “ and “bottom-up innovation”, thereby reducing transaction costs and generating effective incentives. The findings indicate that successful blue carbon governance depends on establishing a rule system that is both locally adaptive and dynamically adjustable. The analytical framework proposed in this study offers a systematic new perspective for developing countries to remedy institutional gaps in blue carbon governance. By demonstrating China’s locally adapted innovations in resource rights delineation and value realization, it also promotes greater inclusiveness and diversity within the global blue carbon standard system, contributing a governance approach from the Global South that is applicable to countries at varying stages of development.

• openalex https://doi.org/10.3390/systems14070803first seen 2026-07-13 06:06:36