Comment A study commissioned by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) and The Nature Conservancy this month revealed that one-fifth of the world's mangrove population has been lost in the last 30 years.
North and Central America lost about 690,000 hectares and Africa lost 510,000 hectares over the last 25 years.
Mangroves are being destroyed up to four times more quickly than other forests.
Since 1980, the groves are being destroyed at a rate of ~0.7% per year across the globe, due to shrimp farming, coastal construction, salt extraction, and other human activities. Basically, aquaculture, agriculture, and urban land use are the mangroves’ greatest threats.
Mangroves are the salt tolerant evergreen forests found along coastlines, lagoons, deltas, and rivers, in more than 120 tropical and subtropical countries and areas.
Mangroves are an important natural resource, as they allow for variety in plant and animal life that inhabits water and shore to coexist while creating structure between the coast and the water, buffering coastal erosion.
Mangroves are one of the most diverse ecosystems on the planet because of their location between land and sea and their ability to grow in a saline habitat with rot-resistant wood. They provide wood, food, medicinal plants and honey, and fodder.
They act as a line of defense during floods, cyclones, and tsunamis; according to the report from the UNEP, there is evidence in some places that mangroves reduced the impact of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.
Mangroves are important not only to the coastal ecosystem, but as with any tree, as a source of atmospheric control; the swamps help control carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas emissions.
"Mangroves are important forested wetlands," said Wulf Killmann, director of the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Forest Products and Industry Division, two years ago when the United Nations addressed the issue of mangroves deforestation.
"If deforestation of mangroves continues, it can lead to severe losses of biodiversity and livelihoods, in addition to salt intrusion in coastal areas and siltation of coral reefs, ports, and shipping lanes. Tourism would also suffer."
This latest report from the UNEP and The Nature Conservancy focuses on making the nations with the largest mangroves aware of the urgency of this situation: Brazil, Nigeria, Australia, Indonesia, and Mexico together account for around half of the world’s total global mangrove area.
These countries can — and must — do more to ban the conversion of mangroves for aquaculture, agriculture, and urban development, and protect them from further retreating.
In Sierra Leone, lawmakers are actually working to create a bill for a seven-nation effort to protect West Africa’s mangroves.
The region once boasted 3 million hectares of mangrove swamps; the bill will seek protection for the 800,000 that remain, but that are being gobbled up mainly as a direct result of the salt extraction process — by the demand for fire wood needed for the process and the erosion that is happening as a result.
"If the mangroves disappear, fishing will be in crisis," said Wetlands' West Africa coordinator Richard Dacosta.
"The saltwater tide will invade river estuaries and coastal areas. Local communities on the coast will have to move."
The effort in Sierra Leone via The West African Mangrove Initiative is helping nations rehabilitate mangroves by planting trees and finding alternative methods of salt extraction and wood sources for the process.
Malaysia has taken action to reduce the retreat rate of mangroves by allocating state ownership of the mangroves to better manage and control their population.
"Countries need to engage in a more effective conservation and sustainable management of the world's mangroves and other wetland ecosystems," Killmann said.
Brigid
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