Reading the WEF Report 'The Regenerative Blue Economy'

The ocean is currently at a major turning point, shifting from something to be 'protected' to a 'foundation for regenerating the economy.' Fisheries, shipping, ports, tourism, aquaculture, offshore wind, marine data, and blue carbon—these are all economic activities staged in the ocean. The World Economic Forum report, 'The Regenerative Blue Economy: Pathways to Prosperity,' presents a more profound perspective. It suggests that 'using the ocean while protecting it' is no longer enough. What is needed moving forward is for the economic activities that use the ocean to transform into mechanisms that contribute to the restoration of marine ecosystems, coastal regions, local communities, employment, culture, and finance. In other words, the blue economy needs to advance from 'sustainable' to 'regenerative.' This report demonstrates the necessity of moving the ocean economy from the stage of sustainability to the stage of regeneration and proposes an implementation framework to achieve this.
Perhaps from now on, the keyword 'regenerative' will be used more often than 'nature positive'! Enjoy the rest of your day.

What is a Regenerative Blue Economy?

The ocean economy is growing. According to the report, the ocean economy generates between $2.6 trillion and $5.1 trillion in gross value added annually, supports the livelihoods of billions of people, carries over 80% of global trade volume, and supports the food security of coastal nations. However, the marine ecosystems that support this growth continue to degrade. The proportion of overfished fish stocks has nearly quadrupled since 1974, 70% to 90% of the world's coral reefs could be lost within the next 20 years, and exposure to coastal flooding could double by 2100. The ocean economy is 'growing while depleting natural capital.' Natural capital refers to the natural foundations that support human society and economic activity, such as forests, rivers, oceans, soil, and biodiversity. In the case of the ocean economy, natural capital includes fish stocks, seaweed beds, coral reefs, mangroves, coastal wetlands, water quality, ocean currents, climate regulation functions, and coastal disaster prevention functions. This is where the limitations of the blue economy to date lie.

The sustainable blue economy is a concept that has spread internationally over the last decade or so. Linked to SDG 14, 'Life Below Water,' it is a framework that attempts to consider environmental conservation, economic development, and social equity as a whole. This concept has had great significance, as it has provided a direction to curb illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing, destructive fishing gear, deep-sea mining, new fossil fuel development, and excessive pollution. However, the report notes that despite the spread of the sustainable blue economy, many indicators of ocean health continue to deteriorate, and many of the targets for SDG 14 are stagnating or regressing. For this reason, the report states that the blue economy needs to advance from an 'economy that reduces harm' to an 'economy that generates restoration.'

This is where the regenerative blue economy comes in. It is easy to understand when translated as 'saisei-gata blue economy' in Japanese. A regenerative blue economy is an economic model that not only conserves marine ecosystems but also restores degraded ecosystems, strengthens social systems in coastal regions, and creates long-term, equitable prosperity. The report, citing the IUCN definition, positions the regenerative blue economy as 'an economic model that combines strict and effective restoration and protection of marine and coastal ecosystems with sustainable, low-carbon or carbon-free economic activities and equitable prosperity.' In short, a regenerative blue economy is an 'economy where the more you use the ocean, the more the ocean and the region recover.' The report views regeneration not just in terms of natural capital, but as the recovery of multiple capitals: nature, human, social, cultural, economic, and financial. In other words, the regeneration of nature requires the regeneration of society. This is the essence of the regenerative blue economy.

Categorizing Ocean Industries into Three Groups

The report divides ocean industries into three groups.

The first is the traditional sector. These are industries that already have a large economic scale and workforce, such as fisheries, shipping, ports, and offshore oil and gas. The second is the growth sector. These are fields expected to expand in the future, such as offshore wind, coastal and marine tourism, aquaculture, desalination, and sewage and wastewater treatment. The third is the frontier sector. These are new industry groups that place regeneration itself at the center of value creation, such as ecosystem restoration, blue biotechnology, marine data, digital services, and marine carbon removal. The report positions the traditional, growth, and frontier sectors as a portfolio with different roles. The traditional sector needs to reduce environmental impact, internalize costs, and direct investment toward regeneration and decarbonization. The growth sector needs to expand within planetary boundaries while strengthening ecosystem health. The frontier sector serves as a foundation that directly links ecosystem recovery and knowledge creation with value creation.

For example, Japan's shipping and port industries are in the traditional sector. Themes here include decarbonized fuels, energy conservation in ports, digitalization, nature-inclusive ports, blue carbon, and connections to tidal flat and seaweed bed restoration. Aquaculture, tourism, offshore wind, and wastewater treatment are growth sectors. Here, rather than simply aiming for business expansion, it is necessary to design for positive impacts on nature and the community. Blue carbon, environmental DNA, marine monitoring, underwater drones, satellite data, natural capital assessment, seaweed bed restoration, and coral restoration are in the frontier sector. Here, scientific reliability, monitoring, monetization, and the design of local benefits are important.

The Traditional Sector Faces a Question of 'Transition'

The traditional sector still has a large presence in the ocean economy. Shipping, ports, fisheries, and offshore oil and gas are deeply involved in global trade, food, energy, and employment. However, their environmental impact is also significant. The report calls for a 'managed transition' for the traditional sector. For example, in fisheries, resource recovery, reduction of destructive fishing methods, rights-based management, local co-management, and connection to food security are important. For shipping and ports, themes include zero-emission fuels, logistics optimization, ship retrofitting, reduction of underwater noise and pollution, smart ports, and regeneration around ports.

The report introduces how the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore is leveraging its position as one of the world's leading transshipment ports to advance the decarbonization of port activities, electrification, charging infrastructure, efficiency improvements, transition pathways for multiple fuels such as ammonia and methanol, digital port systems, and green and digital shipping corridors. This is an example of the traditional port industry beginning to move in a regenerative direction through decarbonization, efficiency, low-carbon fuels, and digitalization. However, the report also states that this alone will not reach a high level of regeneration. To advance to a higher stage, biodiversity restoration, habitat creation, and water quality improvement must be incorporated into port infrastructure and operations.

The Growth Sector Faces a Question of 'Quality of Expansion'

The growth sector is the field that will drive the future blue economy. Offshore wind, aquaculture, coastal tourism, sewage and wastewater treatment, and desalination are expected to see significant demand in the future. What the report emphasizes is whether the expansion of the growth sector is designed in a way that strengthens natural capital. While offshore wind contributes to decarbonization, it impacts marine area use, fisheries, biodiversity, landscapes, and local consensus. That is why site selection, marine spatial planning, environmental impact assessment, local benefits, biodiversity net gain, and coexistence with fisheries are necessary. Aquaculture is important for global protein supply, but issues can arise regarding feed, waste, antibiotics, invasive species, and impacts on the coastal environment. On the other hand, seaweed, bivalves, and integrated aquaculture can contribute to water purification, carbon sequestration, and biodiversity recovery. Coastal and marine tourism supports local economies but can create burdens such as overtourism, coastal development, cruise ships, and stress on coral reefs and seaweed beds. To make tourism regenerative, mechanisms are needed where tourism revenue is reinvested into ecosystem restoration and local resilience. Wastewater treatment is an unexpectedly overlooked but important growth area for the blue economy. If nutrients and pollutants flow into coastal areas, it leads to red tides, hypoxia, water quality degradation, and the decline of seaweed beds. The report organizes wastewater treatment as a field with high regenerative potential if it is linked to resource circulation and the health of coastal waters, rather than just being a treatment facility. If you are serious about promoting seaweed bed restoration and blue carbon, looking only at the ocean is not enough. Design for the entire watershed, including rivers, forests, farmland, urban areas, sewage, rainwater, port drainage, and nutrient management, is necessary. Among the growth sectors, wastewater treatment and water management are key areas that connect the blue economy with smart watershed management.

The Frontier Sector Makes 'Regeneration Itself' an Industry

The most future-oriented group is the frontier sector. This includes ecosystem restoration, nature-based solutions, blue biotechnology, marine data, digital services, and marine carbon removal. The characteristic of these is that the center of value creation is not 'extraction' but 'recovery' or 'knowledge.' For example, ecosystem restoration is a business that restores mangroves, seaweed beds, tidal flats, and coral reefs. In the traditional economy, such activities were easily dependent on donations and subsidies. However, in the future, by linking with blue carbon, natural capital accounting, disaster prevention investment, insurance, tourism, local branding, and corporate nature-related disclosures, there is a possibility of attracting larger funds. Marine data and digital services are also foundations of the regenerative blue economy. Marine data is essential for transparency, traceability, monitoring of illegal fishing, environmental impact assessment, outcome-based finance, verification of blue carbon, and assessment of natural capital. The report states that marine data companies account for a large proportion of the world's blue economy-related startups, and that IoT, satellite monitoring, autonomous observation, and advanced analytics are growth areas. However, the report states that the frontier sector needs to build legitimacy through science, equitable benefit sharing, and reliable impact measurement. The report views technologies such as environmental DNA, remote sensing, marine data, AI, and digital twins as important foundations for the regenerative blue economy.

Designing a Regenerative Blue Economy

Success Indicators Change from GDP to 'Recovery'

One of the strong messages of this report is that the success indicators for the ocean economy will change. In the ocean economy to date, sales, export value, catch volume, number of tourists, port throughput, and power generation have been emphasized. Of course, these are important. However, that alone does not make it regenerative. The report states that the next wave of the ocean economy will be evaluated not only by economic output, but by how much biomass has recovered, how much biodiversity has returned, and how resilient livelihoods have become. For example, for a tourist destination, it will be evaluated not just by the number of tourists, but by the health of coral reefs and seaweed beds, the return of revenue to the region, the suppression of overtourism, local employment, and the preservation of cultural capital. For fisheries, it will be evaluated not just by catch volume, but by the recovery of fish stocks, preservation of spawning grounds, reduction of bycatch, food security, stability of fishers' income, and local co-management. For ports, it will be evaluated not just by throughput, but by emission reductions, noise reduction, water quality improvement, nature-inclusive infrastructure, ecosystem restoration around ports, and contribution to local disaster prevention. For seaweed bed restoration, it should be evaluated not just by the area of seaweed beds, but by carbon sequestration, biodiversity, water quality, fishery resources, local participation, financial circulation, and educational effects. The blue economy of the future will be an era of measuring not 'how much was taken,' but 'how much was returned.'

Three Implementation Frameworks

The first is individual actors. Companies, fishers, local governments, ports, NPOs, research institutions, and community groups must restore one of the following—natural capital, human capital, social capital, cultural capital, economic capital, or financial capital—within their sphere of influence. The second is systems. Through policies, regulations, marine spatial planning, financial incentives, budgets, and governance, individual efforts must be accumulated to create conditions that lead to large-scale regeneration. The third is interaction. Regeneration cannot be achieved by a single company or government alone. Investment in coral reef restoration by tourism operators benefits fisheries, sustainable aquaculture improves water quality, renewable energy facilities function as artificial reefs, data infrastructure attracts finance, and community-based co-management advances resource recovery. Regeneration is born from such interactions.

In many regions, good initiatives are scattered. Organizations restoring seaweed beds, companies collecting marine debris, fisheries cooperatives working on resource management, local governments interested in blue carbon, schools conducting environmental education, research institutions collecting marine data, and companies wanting to provide funding. However, if these are not connected, the impact remains limited. In a regenerative blue economy, it is necessary to turn point-based activities into lines, lines into planes, and planes into mechanisms for the regional economy. What becomes important here is the concept of a 'seascape'.

The report classifies the contributions of individual actors into three stages. The first stage is 'Regeneration-Aligned.' This is a stage where environmental impact is reduced, no new harmful assets are created, investment is directed toward protection and restoration, and a certain positive effect is generated for ecosystems and society within business activities. The second stage is 'Regeneration-Operational.' This is a stage where the core activities of the business themselves generate a net increase in natural capital, create benefits for the local community, and are economically viable. The third stage is 'Regeneration-Native.' This is a stage where multiple capitals—natural, social, cultural, economic, and financial—are restored in the long term in an autonomous and self-reinforcing manner.

Four levers drive the regenerative blue economy—Lever 1: Governance

The report presents four levers for advancing the regenerative blue economy: Governance, Finance, Human Capital and Capacity Building, and Technology and AI. The report states that regeneration is not born from optimizing these four levers individually, but from their interaction.

Fragmented, sector-specific marine management cannot achieve regeneration. Integrated, seascape-level governance is necessary. The 'seascape' referred to here is a marine unit where ecosystems, coastal areas, industries, and local communities are connected as a whole. It is not merely an administrative district or a protected area. It is a space where the sea, coast, watersheds, fisheries, tourism, ports, aquaculture, local culture, residents, companies, and local governments interact. The report outlines four key points for governance reform.

The first is to change the unit of implementation. Instead of one-off projects, use the seascape as the unit. While projects have limited duration and scope, a seascape continues as a socio-ecological system. By thinking in this unit, cumulative impacts, the connection between land and sea, and the interactions of multiple industries can be handled within a single decision-making space. The second is to have spatial clarity. It is necessary to clarify through marine spatial planning where use is permitted, where development is not permitted, and where restoration should be prioritized. The third is to adopt polycentric governance. It is difficult for a central government or a single ministry to manage complex marine systems alone. Regions, local governments, national governments, and international/regional organizations must each have substantive authority and be connected through information exchange and mutual accountability. The fourth is enforceability. Without rules, budgets, legal foundations, and accountability systems, governance will end as mere rhetoric. Marine spatial planning is a process of organizing human activities in marine areas based on geospatial data, while adjusting interests among stakeholders, in a legally binding form. In a regenerative blue economy, marine spatial planning is not an environmental regulation, but an investment foundation. The clearer it is where what can be done, what must be protected, and where restoration investment should be made, the easier it becomes for private capital and regional activities to move.

In the report, the Bird’s Head Seascape in Indonesia is introduced as a representative example of seascape-type governance. The Bird’s Head Seascape is a 225,000-square-kilometer land and sea area spanning Papua and West Papua in Indonesia, and it is one of the regions with the highest marine biodiversity in the world. In the early 2000s, it was under pressure from destructive fishing, coastal development, and extractive industries. However, since 2004, efforts to integrate ecosystem protection, fisheries management, and economic development have progressed across the entire seascape. The customary rights of local communities have been officially recognized, and governments, NGOs, and local communities have collaborated in a multi-layered manner, with 26 marine protected areas now covering more than 52,000 square kilometers. Tourism entry fees have become funding for conservation and regional development, and it is said that the recognition of regional rights has increased the sense of ownership, compliance, cultural connection, and income diversification. The key points of this case include recognizing regional rights, connecting multiple administrative levels, linking conservation with tourism revenue, and simultaneously improving biodiversity and the regional economy.

In a regenerative blue economy, it is necessary to vertically connect national policies and regional marine management. The report states that with an eye toward integration into OECMs and NDCs, monitoring, rights frameworks, and the involvement of relevant ministries should be designed from the beginning. In particular, blue carbon ecosystems such as mangroves, salt marshes, and seagrass beds can contribute to NDCs as quantifiable carbon sequestration, making them an entry point for connecting international climate finance with seascape governance.

Lever 2: Finance

The next important factor is finance. While less than 1% of the annual gross value added of the ocean economy has been invested in sustainable ocean projects over the past decade, much larger funds continue to support activities that are negative for nature or harmful public subsidies. The report points out that the current financial system is not neutral toward ocean degradation, but is designed to accumulate financial capital at the expense of other capitals. This is the challenge of regenerative blue finance.

The report organizes regenerative blue finance into four functions. The first is public finance. This includes public budgets, subsidy reform, marine area usage fees, procurement, and guarantees. This is necessary to support public goods that private capital cannot easily handle alone. This includes ecosystem monitoring, habitat restoration, standard setting, and strengthening regional governance capacity. The second is innovative financial instruments. These include blended finance, sovereign blue bonds, debt-for-nature swaps, and pooled funds. These play a role in increasing investability and attracting large amounts of capital. The third is market mechanisms for blue natural capital. This includes blue carbon and payments for ecosystem services. However, reliability requires monitoring, reporting, verification, additionality, and fair benefit sharing. The fourth is direct finance for local communities. This includes financial windows for indigenous and local communities, intermediaries, venture building, and revolving funds. Without this, funds will not reach the people who are actually protecting the sea. The problem is that funds do not reach the front lines. Small-scale fisheries support about 500 million people and account for at least 40% of the global marine catch and 90% of fishery employment. Nevertheless, it is pointed out that subsidies and official finance favor industrial actors, and the voices of indigenous and local communities are often excluded from decision-making on marine management and fund allocation.

Corporate issuers are also beginning to enter the blue bond market. For example, Ørsted issued the energy sector's first blue bond in 2023, allocating funds to offshore biodiversity restoration and sustainable shipping. DP World issued the first corporate blue bond in the Middle East and North Africa in late 2024, which is said to have achieved a very favorable spread for the company. Also, debt-for-nature swaps are introduced as a method to create fiscal space for marine conservation without requiring additional external funding. The $1.1 billion debt conversion for Ecuador's Galapagos Marine Reserve is expected to bring $323 million to marine conservation. However, such transactions are complex, tend to be creditor-led, and require careful design to align with national priorities. Regarding blue carbon, the report looks at both the potential and the challenges. Blue carbon environments have the potential to generate climate value and regenerative value, estimated at approximately $190 billion per year. On the other hand, outside of mangroves, methodology consensus and the formation of investable projects are still uneven. Legitimacy requires rigorous monitoring, reporting, and verification, formal partnerships with local communities, fair benefit sharing, and policy links with emission reductions.

The report also introduces the case of La Paz in the Gulf of California, Mexico. In this region, while there is marine biodiversity important for fisheries, tourism, and coastal livelihoods, there were pressures from overutilization, ecosystem degradation, and climate change. Therefore, various initiatives were born, such as fishery resource recovery, low-impact aquaculture, conservation tourism, biodiversity monitoring, and entrepreneurship development. However, because they were developing in parallel, the impact on the system as a whole and access to institutional investors were limited. Therefore, the Gulf of California Platform plays a role in connecting investors, philanthropy, regions, companies, civil society, academic institutions, and governments to align goals and resources in five areas: marine conservation, coastal development and resilience, tourism, food systems, and water. From the La Paz case, the report states that to move fragmented regional progress toward system-level change, platform-type coordination is more important than the proliferation of projects. What is needed is a regional blue economy platform.

Lever 3: Human Capital and Capacity Building

No matter how many systems, funds, or technologies there are, if there are no people to operate them on the ground, the regenerative blue economy will not be implemented. Capacity building is positioned not as supplementary, but as foundational. The report also states that ocean literacy is important. Ocean literacy is the ability to understand how the ocean affects us and how we affect the ocean. It is not just knowledge, but includes value judgments, understanding of relationships, and cultural sensibilities. Skills such as marine spatial planning, ecosystem assessment, and financial literacy are said to be cultivated not only through classroom learning but also by participating in actual planning and governance processes. Decision-support tools help stakeholders share information, understand trade-offs, and adjust interests. Using actual data in actual marine areas, talking with actual fishers, companies, and local governments, creating actual financial plans, conducting actual monitoring, and reporting actual results. Talent is cultivated in that process.

The report introduces the case of a social enterprise called the Sea Ranger Service. The Sea Ranger Service is an initiative that links youth employment with ocean stewardship. It recruits young people aged 18 to 29 from coastal areas and trains them in marine and ecosystem field work. It has set a goal of training 20,000 young people by 2040 and restoring 1 million hectares of marine biodiversity. They work on low-emission sailing vessels and connect to paid contracts for seagrass transplantation, seed collection and planting, hydrographic surveying, habitat mapping, natural restoration, and marine plastic research. The essence of this case is that it links marine regeneration with employment policy.

Lever 4: Technology and AI

The cost of measuring the sea is falling due to satellites, sensors, buoys, autonomous unmanned vehicles, environmental DNA, acoustic observation, drones, AI, digital twins, and machine learning. The report explains that these turn fragmented observations into evidence that can be used for decision-making, lowering the costs of verification, adjustment, and risk analysis. However, the report also points out that the data currently being collected is less than 1% of the total spatiotemporal variability of the ocean, and much of the data is sleeping in siloed archives.

In the report, environmental DNA also appears as an important technology. Environmental DNA is a technology that analyzes DNA derived from organisms left in environments such as water and soil to grasp what kind of organisms exist in that place. There is a possibility of grasping changes in biodiversity without direct capture or visual observation. The report organizes that technologies such as remote sensing, environmental DNA, and bioprospecting do not necessarily generate a net increase in ecosystems by themselves, so in many cases, they function as the first stage of 'Regeneration-Aligned.' However, if the data infrastructure supports cooperative management at the seascape level, its contribution is said to approach the second stage. Only when data obtained through environmental DNA is connected to seaweed bed management, fishery resource management, blue carbon, marine spatial planning, corporate finance, and regional education does it approach a regenerative mechanism. Environmental DNA can become a 'common language' that connects governance, finance, and human capital, rather than just a technology.

Which organisms have returned?
Is there a difference between restored and non-restored areas?
What about seasonal changes?
Have fish communities changed?
Is seaweed bed restoration effective for marine resources and biodiversity?
What results can be demonstrated for corporate natural capital investment?

Environmental DNA plays a major role in answering these questions.

Insights for Seaweed Bed Restoration in Japan

When applying this report to Japan, seaweed bed restoration, blue carbon, environmental DNA, and smart watershed management become particularly important. Japan's coastline is a complex overlap of seagrass beds, seaweed beds, tidal flats, coral reefs, fishing grounds, ports, tourist destinations, and coastal communities. Here, marine natural capital and the local economy are inseparable. From the perspective of the WEF report, seaweed bed restoration is truly the implementation site for a regenerative blue economy. This is because it has the potential to simultaneously restore natural capital, human capital, social capital, cultural capital, economic capital, and financial capital.

Seaweed beds are not only blue carbon sinks but also spawning and nursery grounds for fish and shellfish, sites for water purification, foundations for coastal disaster prevention, and natural capital that supports fisheries, tourism, education, and regional identity. In the regenerative blue economy concept presented by the WEF report, regeneration means restoring not just natural capital, but also human, social, cultural, economic, and financial capital simultaneously. In this sense, regions in Japan working on seaweed bed restoration are already standing at the entrance to a regenerative blue economy.

The WEF report indicates that the implementation unit for a regenerative blue economy should not be a one-off project, but a 'seascape'—a marine area where ecosystems, local communities, and industries are connected. Marine restoration cannot be achieved by treating fisheries, ports, tourism, aquaculture, watersheds, wastewater, coastal development, and protected areas separately. The causes of seaweed bed loss are not limited to the sea itself. Rising water temperatures, herbivorous pests, turbidity, nutrient balance, port and coastal development, sediment and nutrient inflow from rivers, watershed land use, sewage and wastewater treatment, and fisheries management are all complexly involved. Therefore, regions seriously and scientifically pursuing seaweed bed restoration must ask not only 'how to plant seaweed,' 'how to install mother algae,' or 'how to remove herbivorous pests,' but also the following questions.

Which watershed is this seaweed bed connected to?
Which fishery resources does it help recover?
Which port, tourism, aquaculture, or educational activities can it be connected to?
Which corporate funds or technologies can be continuously invested?
Which municipal plans or regional strategies is it positioned within?
Which indicators will be used to measure both natural recovery and local benefits simultaneously?

In the words of the WEF report, seaweed bed restoration is not a 'project' but 'regional regenerative infrastructure.' It is natural infrastructure within the sea and a foundational asset for the local economy.

In Japan's seaweed bed restoration, the trend of measuring CO2 absorption through J-Blue Credits is spreading. This is extremely important. If absorption can be quantified, it becomes easier to attract corporate funding and increase the continuity of regional activities. However, from the perspective of the WEF report, looking only at carbon is insufficient for a regenerative approach. In a regenerative blue economy, natural capital must be viewed from multiple aspects. Specifically, it is necessary to combine metrics such as seaweed bed area, seaweed/seagrass coverage, diversity of fish and benthic organisms, water quality, turbidity, nutrients, grazing pressure, catch, local employment, educational participation, and local income.

ANEMONE is described as a biodiversity observation network using environmental DNA originating from Japan, established in 2019 with the goal of creating a survey system covering all of Japan. Furthermore, according to an announcement by Tohoku University, the ANEMONE DB has been built as big data from fish surveys using environmental DNA at 861 locations nationwide with 4,298 samples, and is expected to be used as a 'weather map for living things.' Incorporating environmental DNA into seaweed bed restoration allows for measuring not just 'whether seaweed beds have increased,' but 'whether living things have returned.' This is highly effective in expanding blue carbon from 'a story of carbon absorption' to 'a story of ecosystem recovery.'

On the other hand, while environmental DNA is a powerful method, it is not a panacea. Especially in marine areas, detection results can change depending on water flow, tides, seasons, water temperature, sampling location, and sampling time. Research at Kobe University suggests that when using environmental DNA for seaweed bed monitoring in marine areas, understanding flow conditions allows for the selection of sampling points according to the purpose. While it is considered effective to sample under low-flow conditions, it is important to choose locations with little short-term fluctuation when observing long-term changes. Therefore, when a region scientifically advances seaweed bed restoration using environmental DNA, it is dangerous to talk about 'success in seaweed bed restoration' based on environmental DNA alone. Environmental DNA should be combined with on-site observations such as the following. This combination increases the quantifiability of blue carbon and the persuasiveness of biodiversity recovery.

Environmental DNA is not a technology only for scientists and companies. It can also be used for regional consensus building. In seaweed bed restoration, questions arise among fishers, local governments, companies, residents, tourism operators, schools, and researchers such as 'Is it really effective?', 'What has returned?', and 'Who benefits?'. Here, by combining environmental DNA, underwater imagery, and blue carbon calculation, discussions can shift from subjective arguments to evidence-based ones. Environmental DNA data can become a common language for the region, such as 'this fish species increased this year,' 'the fish community around the seaweed bed has changed,' or 'there is a difference between restored and non-restored areas.' If environmental DNA, water quality, nutrients, sediment, and land-use data from the river side are viewed together at the seaweed bed restoration site, it is possible to judge more scientifically 'why the seaweed beds in this area are easy to recover' or 'why they are difficult to recover.'

In Japan, technology demonstrations related to seaweed bed restoration and blue carbon are increasing. In addition, the Ministry of the Environment has adopted large-scale demonstration projects related to absorption source measures such as blue carbon, and seaweed cultivation tests around Okushiri Town in Hokkaido and the establishment of cultivation methods for Eisenia bicyclis and Ecklonia cava using multi-stage aquaculture facilities have been shown. Such demonstrations are important. However, from the perspective of the WEF report, what comes after the demonstration is called into question.

Will the technology remain in the region? Will it lead to income for fishers? Will it be incorporated into municipal plans? Will corporate funding continue to flow in? Will environmental DNA and blue carbon calculations be used for regional decision-making? Will it connect with tourism, education, fisheries, ports, and watershed management?

Projects that end with a demonstration are not regenerative. To make them regenerative, it is necessary to change them into regional business models, funding models, management models, and human resource development models.

The WEF report positions the regenerative blue economy as 'an economy that treats the health of marine ecosystems and coastal communities as a foundation, not a byproduct, of economic power.' This way of thinking fits very well with seaweed bed restoration in Japan. Japan has the concept of 'Satoumi.' Satoumi is the idea of coastal areas where biological productivity and biodiversity are enhanced through human interaction. This is a philosophy very close to the regenerative blue economy mentioned in the WEF report. However, what is needed from now on is to connect the philosophy of Satoumi to science, finance, data, policy, and business models. This is the greatest insight that Japanese regions should take from the WEF report. The goal is to create a mechanism where the sea, the watershed, and the local economy continue to recover, starting from seaweed beds.

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