A new study compares Japanese and Western blue carbon projects, highlighting key differences in goals, stakeholder collaboration, and policy support

A former intern student at the Graduate Program in Sustainability Science (GPSS) published a study titled "International blue carbon project management: Comparing the ideographs, innovation styles, and co-impacts of Japanese blue carbon projects to Western countries" in the journal Energy Research & Social Science. 

Mr. Carter P. Powers, an undergraduate student at Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Earth Sciences, University of Notre Dame, USA, was a participant in the University of Tokyo Summer Internship Program (UTSIP) of Graduate School in Frontier Sciences in summer 2024. Based on activities during his stay, he, with other two co-authors, published an article on blue carbon project management in Japan. We acknowledge this invaluable academic contribution for UTSIP and GPSS.

Please find the reference and the abstract below:

Powers, Carter P., Quevedo, Jay Mar D., Kameyama, Y. (2025) International blue carbon project management: Comparing the ideographs, innovation styles, and co-impacts of Japanese blue carbon projects to western countries, Energy Research & Social Science, 126, August 2025, 104174.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2025.104174

Abstract

Blue carbon ecosystems are increasingly included in national plans to reach net zero emissions worldwide. However, despite recent studies on the sociopolitical and institutional aspects of blue carbon projects, challenges remain relating to project management. To address this gap, this study conducted semi-structured interviews and email questionnaires to identify the typologies of ideographs, innovation styles, and co-impacts of two Japanese blue carbon projects and compare them to two western case studies analyzed using the same typologies. The results showed that Japanese case studies had high stakeholder collaboration between the national government, private corporations, and local entities and placed strong emphasis on co-benefits of restoration rather than focusing on carbon sequestration. This trend contrasts with two Western case studies that focused strongly on carbon sequestration but struggled with policy support and stakeholder inclusion.