Mangroves

Mangroves are coastal trees and shrubs that line the boundary between land and the sea. Despite their limited abundance, mangroves are extremely crucial in maintaining coastal water quality, supporting fisheries production, and providing protection from floods, storms, and tsunamis. They are capable of storing 2-3 times more carbon in them than traditional forests, thus being a more efficient carbon sink.

Reversing mangrove loss

Mangroves are coastal trees and shrubs that line the boundary between land and the sea. Despite their limited abundance, mangroves are extremely crucial in maintaining coastal water quality, supporting fisheries production, and providing protection from floods, storms, and tsunamis. They are capable of storing 2-3 times more carbon in them than traditional forests, thus being a more efficient carbon sink.

Mangrove loss has been occurring at an alarming rate of 2% per year since the 1970s. Since they only occupy 0.7% of the global area, mangrove destruction is pushing them at the brink of loss. Mangrove degradation causes cascading biodiversity loss, renders coastal communities vulnerable to physical extreme events and releases stored carbon in the form of carbon emissions. As much as 1.02 billion tons of carbon dioxide are being released annually from degraded coastal ecosystems.

What is being done?

Actions to protect mangrove forests include replanting mangrove saplings in degraded coasts, reducing human impacts such as logging and conversion of mangrove forests into fisheries; and protecting the remaining mangrove forests from destruction. These actions fall under two categories:

Mangrove Protection

Mangrove protection includes efforts that safeguard pristine mangrove forests, so that they may be safe from human interference. These actions include reinforcing monitoring for trained personnel, educating locals on mangrove benefits, providing an alternative source of income for the community that falls under avoided emissions.

Mangrove Restoration

Mangrove Restoration is a more intensive effort, and involves bringing back degraded mangrove lands back to its pristine state. These may include mangrove plantation activities, training local volunteers and fall under the reduced emissions.

By supporting projects that are doing one or all of the above, businesses can do their part not only for carbon storage, but coastal rehabilitation and socio-economic development.

Mangrove protection and restoration with Earthly

Earthly recognizes that for timely climate action, we will have to act smart and invest in opportunities that bring bigger benefits from carbon storage and biodiversity perspectives. Mangrove protection offers exactly that, which is why we support a range of impactful mangrove protection and restoration projects. This includes projects like Mangrove Restoration in Myanmar and Mangrove Plantation in Madagascar.

Mangrove Restoration In Myanmar

Mangrove Restoration project in Myanmar is bringing back 4500 ha of mangrove forests in the degraded Ayeyarwady Delta, a riverine delta that has seen heavy mangroves loss since 1980. The project is being led by Worildview International Foundation, an experienced blue carbon conservation organization that have perfected mangrove planting technique in a way that returns a 96% success rate for young saplings. The project is tackling the root causes for local mangrove degradation by employing local communities in the mangrove plantations, investing in local education and infrastructure development and by raising awareness about the importance of mangroves amongst communities.

The Madagascar Mangrove Restoration Project

The Madagascar Mangrove Project run by Eden Restoration is one of our proudest projects. Started in 2007, the project has already planted over 300 million trees and created over 3 million workdays. The project is tackling the dual issues of forest degradation and acute poverty with their ‘employ to plant’ campaign that aims to provide fair employment to local people to grow, plant, and guard to maturity native species forest on a massive scale.