Operationalizing international human rights law for pro-poor blue carbon governance: the HCPP framework

This study addresses a practical issue in blue carbon initiatives: carbon sequestration efforts often overlook human rights protections for impoverished coastal communities. It aims to operationalize international human rights law into a practical framework for pro-poor blue carbon governance, ensuring projects safeguard fundamental rights and livelihoods alongside climate mitigation goals. This study adopts a rights-based approach (RBA) operationalized through the PANEL principles, including Participation, Accountability, Nondiscrimination, Empowerment and Legality. Using this approach, the study undertakes a normative analysis of four ideal types of blue carbon governance: Exploitative, Top-down, Rights-recognizing and Empowering. It also assesses their compliance with human rights standards and identifies key implementation gaps. The study identifies four core pillars for effective governance: clarifying tenure rights, designing pro-poor benefit-sharing mechanisms, establishing participatory and accountable decision-making structures and embedding mandatory human rights safeguards. It further demonstrates that integrating human rights into project design is a practicable means for achieving synergistic climate, ecological and social co-benefits. This study introduces the novel Human Rights–Carbon–Pro-Poor (HCPP) framework, which translates abstract legal obligations into actionable indicators. It bridges the gap between legal theory and environmental practice, offering a practical pathway for equitable blue carbon transitions.