THE UNITED KINGDOM’S BLUE CARBON INVENTORY: - ASSESSMENT OF MARINE CARBON STORAGE AND

2 Assessment of Marine Carbon Storage and Sequestration Potential in the Irish Sea and Welsh Coast Region (Including Within Marine Protected Areas): Executive Summary for Policymakers This report was commissioned by WWF, The Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB to assess the extent, scale, distribution and potential of the current blue carbon sinks in the region of water known as the Irish Sea and Welsh C. [...] The approach follows that of successful and widely used audits of carbon storage and sequestration processes, primarily the review of Scotland’s blue carbon stores (Burrows et al., 2014) and more recently the reports of the assessment of carbon capture and storage in the English North Sea Region (Burrows et al., 2021), the English Channel and Western Approaches Region (Burrows et al., 2024a) and S. [...] 2.1 Environmental setting of the Irish Sea and Welsh Coast Region In this section, blue carbon habitats are described and reviewed in terms of their carbon production, sequestration and storage capacities, first across all regions of the UK and then in the context of the Irish Sea and Welsh Coast Region. [...] The region discussed in this report includes the Northern Irish coast, the entire Welsh coast, part of the English coast (from a small region of the Cheshire coast to the Cumbrian coast up to the border of Scotland) and the self-governed Isle of Man Territorial Seas coastline. [...] The marine boundary of the territorial waters surrounding the Isle of Man shares its borders with the territorial waters of Wales to the south, Scotland to the north, Northern Ireland to the west and England to the east.