The Blue Catalyst Fund, led by Fair Carbon and Finance Earth, has launched a call for proposals, looking to back projects working on mangrove conservation and restoration.
Aiming to accelerate the growth of high-quality blue carbon projects, the fund will support selected initiatives towards investment readiness, providing them with technical expertise, financial and transaction advisory and milestone-based funding.
As shared in the announcement, approved projects will receive an unsecured contingent loan, with no equity taken and repayment required only if follow-on investment is secured.
With this measure, the Fund’s incentives are aligned with the project’s success.
The opportunity is open to projects globally, and it will be accepting applications by 19:00 BST / 20:00 CEST on Thursday 1 October 2026.
Today, 50% of the planet’s wetlands are already lost, while experts highlight that 400 million tons of CO2 are released annually in the atmosphere due to mangrove degradation.
Coastal ecosystems like these sequester tenfold more CO2 per hectare than terrestrial forests, and, according to scientists, they have the potential to unlock $65 billion in annual cost savings from reduced damage due to extreme weather.
At the same time, insights published by BeZero show that only 0.34% of total voluntary carbon market (VCM) issuances are accounted for by blue carbon.
Relevant: Blue Catalyst Fund Backs Mangrove Projects In Gambia And Guinea In First Cohort
The purpose of the Blue Catalyst Fund
The Blue Catalyst Fund wants to address the project-finance gap in blue carbon. These projects, the Fund points out, attract less than 1% of international climate finance, while high development costs, technical requirements and investor due diligence allow only a small portion of credible projects to evolve to a point where larger-scale finance can follow.
This call for proposals is part of the Fund’s vision of protecting or restoring 150,000 hectares of coastal and marine ecosystems by 2035.
As part of this vision, the Fund has the ambition of avoiding or removing 32 million tons of CO2e over the projects’ lifetime and unlocking $275M of private investment for coastal ecosystems and communities.
Read more: Cercarbono Seeks Public Feedback On New Blue Carbon Methodology
