Effective management and restoration of blue carbon ecosystems is increasingly recognised as a nature-based solution to climate change, with a range of environmental, economic, and social co-benefits. Advocates argue that a combination of regulatory controls and economic incentives (including in compliance and voluntary markets for carbon and biodiversity credits) can be used to support shifts away from unsustainable marine and coastal management and use commensurate with the critical and threatened existence of blue carbon ecosystems. There is growing scientific consensus about the varying ways and rates at which blue carbon ecosystems store and release atmospheric carbon, necessary for the design of any regulatory or market system. However, the design and implementation of legal and policy frameworks has been slow to follow. This is partly because there are significant legal uncertainties to confront in the design of blue carbon policy frameworks, especially in determining who has the lawful right to undertake blue carbon activities and benefit from carbon credits, in the context of complicated and unsettled land and resource rights around the coast. In this presentation I will discuss the legal challenges and opportunities for designing policy frameworks for blue carbon in Aotearoa New Zealand, focusing on land and resource tenure and resource planning and consenting. It is critical that we centre justice and equity in the design of legal and policy frameworks for blue carbon, across all stages and scales, in order to avoid repeating the colonial injustices of the past.