Kenya’s Blue Carbon Ecosystems NDC Implementation and Investment Plan 2025-2035, launched in June 2026 at the 11th Our Ocean Conference in Mombasa, sets out how the country intends to fold blue carbon restoration into its national climate commitments over the next decade. It is the policy backdrop against which Twende’s own coastal restoration work sits.
Inside Kenya’s Blue Carbon Ecosystems NDC Investment Plan 2025-2035
The plan consolidates Kenya’s 2020-2030 and 2031-2035 Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) cycles into a single blue carbon framework, built around five priority pillars.
The five pillars
As set out in the plan: conserving and restoring blue carbon ecosystems; community stewardship and livelihoods; scientific research and monitoring; governance and policy; and sustainable finance. Together they frame blue carbon not only as a conservation objective but as a financing and governance undertaking spanning national agencies, coastal county governments and local communities.
What the plan targets by 2035
The plan sets an investment target of roughly USD 600 to 620 million by 2035, alongside restoration targets of around 75% of Kenya’s degraded mangrove cover (an estimated 61,000 hectares) and protection of 20,000 to 22,000 hectares of seagrass meadow, out of roughly 39,000 hectares nationally. Financing is intended to draw on blended public-private finance, Article 6 carbon markets under the Paris Agreement, blue and green bonds, guarantees and insurance products, project-preparation facilities and community-based finance. A related USD 300 million Kenya Blue-Green Bond Programme, structured through the Nairobi Securities Exchange with FSD Africa and UNDP advising, was announced at the same conference, naming blue carbon restoration as one of its key pillars.
Who leads implementation
The plan names the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI), the Kenya Forest Service and the Kenya Fisheries Service as lead technical agencies, with implementation carried out through six coastal county governments: Mombasa, Kilifi, Kwale, Lamu, Tana River and Taita-Taveta.
Twende Green Planet is not a funding recipient or formal partner under this national plan; our programmes on Kenya’s coast, from mangrove restoration to community nursery work, operate independently of it. We track it here because it sets the policy and financing direction the wider blue carbon sector in Kenya is moving in, and it is useful context for anyone trying to understand where Twende’s work fits within that bigger picture.