Conclusion
Along with other measures, investments in mangroves are expected to generate benefits around four times greater than the costs. Mangroves have also been found to be an effective defense against tsunamis, reducing wave heights between five and 35 percent.
Haven for threatened animals
Of the over 1,500 species that depend on mangroves for their survival, 15 percent are threatened with extinction. This number is increasing when looking at mammals: Nearly half of mammals living or feeding in mangrove forests could go extinct in coming years, with trends worsening for most of them.
Protecting and restoring mangrove forests thus means bringing back critical habitat for vulnerable animal species like tigers and jaguars. The good news is that restoration works! Initiatives in Indonesia and the United Arab Emirates have been recognized as UN World Restoration Flagship for bringing back nature in coastal ecosystems.
Food security
As biodiversity havens, mangroves support a huge variety of plants and animals, many of them important for food production. They act as nurseries for young fish and home to honey bees.
For 1.5 billion people, fish is the most critical source of protein and in low-income food-deficit countries, nearly 20 percent of the average animal protein intake comes from fish. The disappearance of mangroves would have dramatic consequences for fisheries in developing countries.
Conversely, restoring mangroves could add 60 trillion young, edible and commercially valuable fish and invertebrates to coastal waters every year, providing a significant boost to food security as our human population continues to grow.
Natural recovery
Bringing lost ecosystems back to life is a daunting task. However, one of the most effective ways to protect and restore damaged mangroves is through enhanced recognition and implementation of Indigenous Peoples’ collective rights and actions across the broader spectrum of environmental governance and rule of law as envisaged in the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
This is particularly important given that “globally, indigenous peoples are custodians of 80 percent of the planet’s biodiversity with 5,000 unique traditional cultures and ancestral lands covering 32 percent of all global land and inland waters across 90 countries.”
When communities along the coast of Java, Indonesia, started replanting mangroves to conquer rising sea levels, the results were sobering: only 15-20 percent of planted saplings survived. The rest was simply washed away with the tides.
With the help of researchers and partners–such as Wetlands International–the villagers tried out a new solution: trapping the mud with seawalls made of natural materials, giving young mangroves space to recover naturally. The results were astounding. Mangrove survival rates shot up from 20 to over 70 percent. The Building with Nature Initiative has since been recognized as UN World Restoration Flagship for its success.
Natural regeneration is now recognized and tried out in other parts of the world, together with other restoration approaches suited to local conditions. Understanding and addressing the drivers of mangrove loss is the first step towards ecosystem restoration.
UNEP News