Blue forests are marine and coastal ecosystems that are particularly valuable through their provisioning of multiple ecosystem services, of which carbon capturing and sequestration is one.

The ability to assimilate and store atmospheric carbon is shared by all marine ecosystems (a concept also termed ‘blue carbon’). Some are particularly effective at this. Mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and saltwater marshes in tropical areas account for more than 50 % of all carbon storage in ocean sediments; despite they only cover 0.5 % of the sea bed. In the northern and southern hemispheres, kelp forests are particularly important. Kelp forests live on temperate and boreal rocky reefs, covering 25 % of the world’s coastline and are found along most of the Norwegian coast.