Precautionary conservation and cooperative global governance are needed to protect Antarctic blue carbon: the world's largest increasing natural form of carbon storage with high sequestration potential. As patterns of ice loss around Antarctica become more uniform, there is an underlying increase in carbon capture-to-storageto-sequestration on the seafloor. The amount of carbon captured per unit area is increasing and the area available to blue carbon is also increasing. Carbon sequestration could further increase under moderate (+1°C) ocean warming, contrary to decreasing global blue carbon stocks elsewhere. For example, in warmer waters, mangroves and seagrasses are in decline and benthic organisms are close to their physiological limits, so a 1°C increase in water temperature could push them above their thermal tolerance (e.g. bleaching of coral reefs). In contrast, on the basis of past change and current research, we expect that Antarctic blue carbon could increase by orders of magnitude. The Antarctic seafloor is biophysically unique and the site of carbon sequestration, the benthos, faces less anthropogenic disturbance than any other ocean continental shelf environment. This isolation imparts both vulnerability to change, and an avenue to conserve one of the world's last biodiversity refuges. In economic terms, the value of Antarctic blue carbon is estimated at between £0.65 and £1.76 billion (~2.27 billion USD) for sequestered carbon in the benthos around the continental shelf. To balance biodiversity protection against society's economic objectives, this paper builds on a proposal incentivising protection by building a 'nonmarket framework' via the 2015 Paris Agreement to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This could be connected and coordinated through the Antarctic Treaty System to promote and motivate member states to value Antarctic blue carbon and maintain scientific integrity and conservation for the positive societal values ingrained in the Antarctic Treaty System.

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Studies grounded in regime theory have examined the effectiveness of so-called 'minilateral' climate change forums that have emerged outside of the UN climate process. However, there are neither detailed studies of the legitimacy of these forums nor of the impacts of their legitimacy on effectiveness and governance potential. Adopting the lens of legitimacy, we analyze the reasons for the formation of minilateral climate forums and their recent role in global climate governance. In particular, we use Karlsson-Vinkhuyzen and Vihma's analytical framework for international institutions to examine three minilateral climate forums: (i) the Asia-Pacific Partnership; (ii) the Major Economies Meetings; and (iii) the G8 climate process. These forums are all found to have significant deficits in their source-based, process-based and outcome-based legitimacy, particularly when compared to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. If assessed purely on grounds of effectiveness, the minilateral forums might be easily dismissed as peripheral to the UN climate process. However, they have played an important role by providing a site for powerful countries to shape the assumptions and expectations of global climate governance. We therefore argue that the observed institutional fragmentation allows key states to use minilateral forums as sites to shape the architecture of global climate governance.

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