A fisherman sits next to several boats at the GeoCuba Local Interest Fishing Port in the bay of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

By Dariel Pradas
MANZANILLO, Cuba, Oct 2 2024 (IPS)

Every time a hurricane clouds the skies over the city of Manzanillo, in the eastern Cuban province of Granma, the sea pounds the Litoral neighbourhood, forcing many of the 200 families who live there to evacuate inland because of flooding.

When the weather is calm, the sea penetrates subtly and constantly, salinizing the water table and eroding the coast, affecting the foundations of houses and artesian wells.

“The water almost always enters this area. The houses were built too close to the sea and the mangroves are deforested,” community leader Martha Labrada, 65, told IPS.

Labrada has presided over the people’s council (local administration organisation) for 13 years, which covers the Litoral neighbourhood and a two-kilometer stretch of coastline that is home to about 5,000 people.

Also, in her jurisdiction, about 0.2 square kilometres of mangroves have been deforested or are in very poor condition.

A mangrove forest in Manzanillo Bay, eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Protective mangroves

According to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), mangroves extract up to five times more carbon than land forests, raise the ground level and thus slow down the rise in sea level.

This coastal ecosystem, typical of tropical and subtropical areas, usually consists of a swamp forest, a strip of black mangrove (Avicennia germinans) and a strip of red mangrove (Rhizophora mangle), the barrier closest to the sea, whose trunks absorb the impact of waves and protect against extreme weather conditions.

Mangroves act as nurseries for fish fry and as havens for honey bees, among a huge variety of fauna and flora.

They also serve as a protective area for fresh water. If degraded, salt from marine waters would more easily enter underground water basins, contaminating the drinkability of this liquid and disabling wells located miles inland.

Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of the Mi Costa project on behalf of the provincial government of Granma in eastern Cuba. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

Protection from the sea

The Litoral neighbourhood is one of the most vulnerable in the municipality to climate change because it borders the mangroves, but it is not the only one in this situation.

In Manzanillo there are six people’s councils that are in direct contact with the coast. Some 60,000 inhabitants suffer the consequences, almost half of the total population of the municipality located 753 kilometres east of Havana.

The need to find solutions to the problem of rising sea levels was therefore born in the rural neighborhoods and villages of Manzanillo.

To counteract this prospect, small community projects emerged in 2018, also promoted by a national plan to tackle climate change known as Tarea Vida, which had been launched by the central government a year earlier.

As a result, 23 initiatives were set up in the municipality, which were later grouped in a single nationwide project called Mi Costa, the project’s coordinator in Manzanillo, Margot Hernández, told IPS.

Mi Costa seeks to create conditions of resilience to climate change through adaptation solutions based on strengthening the benefits provided by coastal ecosystems. In essence, its main task is to reforest and rehabilitate mangroves.

“In addition, we have to change living habits. That’s what we are working on,” Hernández added.

Ditch built in the middle of a mangrove swamp to contribute to its drainage and the recirculation of saline and fresh water in the municipality of Manzanillo, eastern Cuba. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

Behind deforestation

Manzanillo, because of its low isometry and its 25 kilometres of coastline, is in a serious state of environmental vulnerability.

The deforested areas of mangroves amount to 708.7 hectares, being the most affected concentrated at the river mouths.

With a weakened natural containment barrier, the saline waters penetrate the riverbeds and, for example, in the Yara River, in the north of the municipality, they do so up to seven kilometres inland, according to Leandro Concepción, the project coordinator for the Granma Provincial Delegation of Hydraulic Resources.

In any case, the salinity penetrates through underground water basins and, according to Hernández, the coordinator in Manzanillo, “there are people’s artesian wells, which were once used for consumption but are now salinized.”

Mangrove deforestation has several causes: the lack or blockage of channels hinders the ebb and flow of the tide and alters the exchange of freshwater with marine waters.

It is also affected by the invasion of invasive exotic species such as the arboreal Ipil Ipil or guaje (Leucaena leucocephala), anthropogenic human intervention through the construction of infrastructure, agricultural and livestock practices near the coast, and even the felling of mangroves to make charcoal.

A group of people receive a class given by the Mi Costa project at the Manzanillo Training Center. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

According to Labrada, the community leader in Litoral, several houses have been built almost adjacent to the mangrove, without the corresponding construction permits. Moreover, state-owned industrial infrastructures, such as a shoe factory and an inactive sawmill, cause the same damage.

Coastal and river pollution from industrial waste dumping also depresses coastal ecosystems.

For decades, the region’s sugar mills and rice industry dumped their waste into the rivers, Blanca Estrada, administrative coordinator of Mi Costa on behalf of the Granma provincial government, told IPS.

This situation is one of the examples of climate injustice in the area: upstream, the industrial sector caused environmental havoc that affected mangrove health and, at the end of the chain, the quality of life of coastal residents, making them more vulnerable to climatic events.

In 2023, decisive measures were taken to solve the problem and the few active factories no longer discharge their waste into the sea or use filters. In the second half of 2024, the results have already begun to show: “The migratory birds have returned, something you didn’t see months ago,” said Estrada.

However, the effects of climate change still persist in Manzanillo.

“The environmental situation today is quite complex for the keys,” Víctor Remón, director of Manzanillo’s Department of Territorial Development, which belongs to the local government, told IPS.

The municipality’s territory contains an extensive cay of 2.44 square kilometres, but Cayo Perla has already been submerged under the waters of the Gulf of Guacanayabo.

“It disappeared six or seven years ago. It was a beautiful key, with beautiful white sands. There was a tourist facility from where you could see the city of Manzanillo,” Remón said.

For his part, Roberto David Rosales, fisherman and Mi Costa contributor, remembers a path he used to walk along the shore until last year; now it has been ‘swallowed’ by the sea.

“Almost two meters were lost in this area in one year. These are things that force us to be protectors of the mangroves. The Mi Costa project came at the right time,” he told IPS.

Margot Hernández (left), coordinator of the Mi Costa project in Manzanillo, opens the training centre in the city of Manzanillo. Credit: Courtesy of Mi Costa in Manzanillo

Steps towards a solution

Mi Costa was made official in December 2021, but heavy work began in 2023, due to a pause caused by the COVID pandemic.

In Manzanillo, the project brought together about 100 collaborators, who were divided into small community groups of about 10 people, who support the monitoring and cleaning of mangroves and ditches and awareness-raising among the population.

Labrada also has its own people’s council group, composed of six women and four men.

In addition, training centres have been set up in the municipality on climate change adaptability, environmental safeguards, gender and other issues. To date, 10,500 people have been trained.

“We are working with the coast dwellers, because the issue is that people don’t leave the coasts, but that they stay and learn to live there, taking care of them,” said Estrada, the government coordinator.

Sunset on the boardwalk in the eastern Cuban city of Manzanillo. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños / IPS

They have also built 1,300 meters of ditches, using picks and shovels, to achieve a form of water rotation, but this figure has yet to be multiplied.

The immediate challenge is to finish building the nursery where the mangrove seedlings will sprout and then be planted in the deforested areas.

“Once we have the nursery, there will be no difficulty at all in Granma to begin the process of rehabilitating the mangroves,” Norvelis Reyes, Mi Costa’s main coordinator in the province, told IPS.

Mi Costa’s area of action in Granma covers, in addition to the coast of Manzanillo, the northern municipalities of Yara and Río Cauto.

Nationwide, 24 communities in the south of Cuba are involved in resilience actions (1,300 kilometres of coastline), of which 14 are at risk of disappearing due to coastal flooding by 2050, including Manzanillo.

The southern coast of this Caribbean island country was chosen because it is more vulnerable to climate change and sea level rise, given its lower geographical isometry than in the north.

In addition, the south also has a higher concentration of mangroves, making it more necessary and effective to build coastal resilience based on adaptation and focused on the rehabilitation and reforestation of these ecosystems.

While implemented by the communities themselves and with the participation of the villagers, the project is supervised by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Environment and the country office of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

The Green Climate Fund provided funding of USD 23.9 million, while Cuban state institutions contributed USD 20.3 million.

The ultimate goal will be to restore some 114 square kilometres of mangroves, 31 square kilometres of swamp forest and nine square kilometres of grassy swamps in eight years. After that, a period of 22 years will be dedicated to the operation and maintenance of the implemented actions.

It is estimated that more than 1.3 million people will benefit on this Caribbean island, the largest in the region and home to 11 million people.

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Excerpt:

Aerial view of San Crisanto and its preserved mangrove, in the state of Yucatan, in southeastern Mexico. In addition to trapping and storing CO2, mangroves control coastal erosion, protect against hurricanes and clean water. However, in Yucatan, as in other similar ecosystems, they face threats from increasing urbanization, mass tourism and the effects of the climate crisis. Credit: Juan Pablo Ampudia / IPS

By Emilio Godoy
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Aug 2 2022 (IPS)

Two extremes of coastal development can be found side-by-side in the small community of San Crisanto, in the municipality of Sinanché in Mexico’s southeastern Yucatán state.

On one side is the mangrove forest that the community has conserved since 1995. It protects the settlement from coastal erosion, supports local fisheries and provides jobs in ecotourism. And, as of 2022, it is generating income from carbon credits.

On the other side, two large housing developments are taking shape. Such building work in the coastal zone is one of the biggest threats to mangrove ecosystems in Mexico and worldwide. But in San Crisanto, the forest is safe — for now.

“Fortunately, the mangroves are well,” says to IPS José Loria, president of the community-based San Crisanto Foundation, which oversees efforts to protect and restore them. “We’re working. Thanks to this, there is a better perspective regarding their environmental services.”

But elsewhere in Mexico threats to mangroves are rising. Meanwhile, uncertainty surrounds government-funded efforts to restore the coastal forests, and it is unclear whether the mangroves can cope with rising sea levels the global warming is creating.

Loss and restoration

Only three countries — Indonesia, Australia and Brazil — have a greater area of mangroves than Mexico, which had 905 086 hectares of these forests in 2020.

These fragile ecosystems have a dual role to play in the fight against the climate crisis. On one hand, they absorb and store vast amounts of carbon. On the other, they protect coastlines from storms and rising seas.

But they are under threat from the construction of aquaculture farms, infrastructure, and tourist development. Regulations intended to protect mangroves and wetlands haven’t stopped their devastation.

Mangrove deforestation affects three states in particular, according to Mexico’s Mangrove Monitoring System. In the northern territory of Sinaloa, it totaled 5 258 hectares between 2015 and 2020, in Baja California Sur it amounted to 1 068 and in the northern state of Nayarit, 247 hectares.

As well as deforestation, large areas of mangroves are being degraded by human activities. While the total area of degraded mangroves fell from 18 332 hectares in 2015 to 9 680 hectares in 2020, it increased in the states of Baja California Sur and Chiapas, in the south.

Replanting lost mangrove forests is one of the aims of the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration 2021-2030, which was launched in 2019, but so far no mangrove restoration projects in Mexico have been registered on the UN’s database.

But many mangrove restoration projects are in fact taking place. Between 2006 and 2020, for example, Mexico’s National Forestry Commission (Conafor) approved 74 mangrove planting projects to compensate for deforestation elsewhere. These projects took place in 13 states, covered 11 479 hectares and cost 200 million dollars, according to Conafor data. Nayarit state has hosted 21 initiatives and the southeastern state of Veracruz, 18.

In addition to these deforestation-compensation projects, Conafor funded 11 mangrove restoration initiatives in 2021. Together, they planted 1,34 million mangrove seeds on 1 048 hectares, and cost 2,52 million dollars.

Mangrove logging in Puerto Morelos, in the southeastern state of Quintana Roo, in the Yucatán Peninsula, a forbidden activity by the environmental laws. In Mexico, mangroves face threats from urbanization, tourism development and the installation of aquaculture farms. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Information vacuum

Claudia Teutli, a mangrove researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the state-run National Polytechnic Institute, critiques some aspects of policies towards mangroves.

“We don’t know the success of the projects, due to how the restoration has been done,” she told IPS. “It has been done mostly for offsets requirements [for environmental damage]. There wasn’t a goal of recovering the ecosystem.”

Teutli says the government’s monitoring system is out of date, and that restoration requires better strategies and knowledge of restoration sites.

“There is a confusion between restoration and reforestation,” she says. “We don’t know what was done and how. Success is more than the number of planted trees.”

Joanna Acosta, a professor of conservation biology at the state-run Autonomous University of Carmen in the southeastern state of Campeche, agrees.

“We don’t know where restoration has worked or where it has failed,” she says. “The governmental cartography doesn’t clarify if the mangroves are restored or not. We have to introduce transparency strategies, because there shouldn’t be intervention in areas already under restoration.”

The scale of the challenge is huge — Acosta estimates that Mexico has at least 235 000 hectares of mangroves that are not covered by conservation or management programs. She says that acknowledgement of the value of mangroves should work in favor of the design of public policies.

“Mangroves are the most resilient to the climate crisis, that’s why they should be protected,” she says. “It’s important to protect them due to their capacity for capturing and storing carbon, and because their degradation releases carbon dioxide.”

Inside San Crisanto’s large coastal mangrove swamp, in the southeastern state of Yucatán, which survives thanks to the local community’s efforts. Mexican policies for mangrove protection haven’t yielded clear results, as there is a lack of follow-up for monitoring and evaluation of the governmental support programs. Credit: Emilio Godoy / IPS

Resisting rising seas?

The community in San Crisanto is capitalizing on this. It has begun selling carbon offsets based on the carbon its 850 hectares of mangrove forest stores.

San Crisanto is an ejido — an area of land owned by the state but held and managed communally by local people. Its mangroves also generate revenue from Conafor’s Environmental Services Payment Program. This year, the program is paying the ejido 53 dollars for each of 340 hectares of mangroves.

The ejido suggests the creation of a national mangrove network and a national coastal resources system.

“There should be some work for building the organization,” says Loria. “We are the starting point for correcting environmental processes and generating resilience.”

But despite San Crisanto’s successes, Loria acknowledges problems such as coastal erosion. This raises the questions of how Mexico’s mangroves will tolerate rising seas as the planet warms.

Some researchers say rising sea levels will outpace the rate at which mangroves accumulate sediment in the next 30 years if warming continues at its current rate. This would drown the mangroves. Other scientists, working in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula, say mangrove forests will vary in their ability to cope with rising seas.

Teutli is upbeat, saying that as the sea level rises, mangrove sediments will accumulate, keeping the trees above the water level.

“[Mangroves] are adapting to flooding,” she says. “Before we thought they didn’t tolerate it. Tropicalization is coming and it is going to help the mangroves.”

This article is part of a two-story series that was produced with support from Internews’ Earth Journalism Network.

A woman uses a three-stone fire. The method consumes a lot of mangrove wood, which is impacting the livelihoods of the local community. By growing fast-growing trees, the pressure on the mangrove is lessened. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

Despite an abundance of fisheries reserves along Kwale County’s lush coastline located on the south coast of Kenya, fishers can no longer cast a net just past the coral reef and expect an abundant crab or prawn harvest.

Fishing is the community bedrock accounting for at least 80 percent of the economy, and Mwanamvua Kassim Zara, a local fish trader, tells IPS fish stock has declined significantly.

Fish prices are at an all-time high, especially for Dagaa, a tiny silverfish and a household staple food in Vanga Bay Village. Vanga bay is one of 40 boat landing sites in the coastal Kwale County.

“I buy a bucket of fish from the fishermen at 40 to 45 dollars, up from 20 to 25 dollars. The high prices are then transferred to our customers who buy one kilogram of boiled, dried, and salted fish at 3 dollars up from 2 (dollars),” she says.

Experts say these are effects of climate change driven and accelerated by human activity, and the community is feeling the heat.

“The community’s attempts to diversify into maize and rice farming have been unsuccessful because of very high tides from the Indian Ocean and consequent flooding of adjacent paths and rice farms. Another effect of climate change,” says Richard Mwangi from Kenya Forest Services.

More than twenty years ago, this was not the case. The community’s first line of defence against Indian Ocean related catastrophes was intact due to an expansive Vanga Forest spanning over 4,428 hectares, approximately 10,900 acres.

Since then, approximately 18 hectares of mangroves have been lost every year for over 25 years due to over-harvesting of mangroves for fuel and cheap building material, according to the Kenya Forest Service.

“Despite a decline in fish population and scarcity in certain fish species, Vanga is still reliant on fishing, and small-scale fish traders solely use wood fuel to boil dagaa for sale. At least 87 percent of households in this community rely on mangrove wood for energy,” Mwangi tells IPS.

Destruction of the forest has significantly compromised Vanga Bay’s Ocean ecosystems, says Professor Jacinta Kimiti of South Eastern Kenya University’s School of Environment, Water & Natural Resources.

“Coastal ecosystems are extremely important in capturing carbon emissions and supporting livelihoods such as fishing and tourism. Importantly, mangrove forests are a breeding area for fish,” she says.

Left vulnerable and exposed to a myriad of climate change-related challenges, the community is taking the pressure off the mangrove forest by planting at least two hectares of fast-growing tree species to meet the community’s domestic energy needs. These five acres of woodlots will be used by three adjacent villages, Vanga, Jimbo and Kiwegu.

Zara says the community is open to more effective fish preparation technologies to protect mangroves because current methods rely on open three-stone fires that consume a lot of mangrove wood. She indicates that a well-wisher recently donated a large energy-saving stove for communal use.

Mwangi says wood fuel is similarly central to domestic life in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. He stresses that, as the Vanga community has discovered, current wood energy systems are not sustainable and are a major threat to livelihoods.

According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), more than 63 percent of people in Africa have no alternative to wood, relying on wood fuel as their primary energy source. Approximately 90 percent of wood extraction in Africa is used for fuel.

The International Energy Agency’s regional energy outlook warns that wood fuel will remain central to Africa’s future as the primary energy source because cleaner alternatives or sustainable fuels remain out of reach.

Dr Julius Ecuru, Manager at BioInnovate Africa at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), tells IPS that sustainable fuel is fuel obtained from biologically based feedstock such as wood, crops like sorghum and sugar cane, or algae, as well as other agricultural waste.

“We can use this feedstock also to produce fuel that has the same chemical composition and quality as the fossil fuel used in jet engines or aeroplanes. If used in this way for jet engines, we refer to it as sustainable aviation fuel. With respect to cooking fuel for household use, sustainable fuels can be prepared or blended in specific ways, but this is yet to gain traction,” he explains.

“Meanwhile, regarding natural wood or wood fuel, households and communities can be encouraged to plant fast-growing or maturing trees, like the Grevilia tree, which has multiple uses. Its regularly pruned branches can, for example, be used as firewood. It also has good soil conserving properties.”

Research by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) finds that, like the Vanga Forest, Miombo Woodland, an African dryland forest ecosystem, is similarly at risk of over-harvesting and destruction of livelihoods.

The forest covers an estimated 2.7 million square kilometres in the south-central part of the continent. It is Africa’s most extensive tropical woodland, forming a broad ecoregion belt across countries such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

FAO says the magnificent ecoregion belt provides an important source of resilience for an estimated 100 million rural poor and 50 million urban community.

Experts such as Mwangi warn the woodlands are under threat from conversion into smallholder agriculture, livestock keeping, charcoal production and logging.

He stresses that urbanization will only increase the threat due to an over-reliance on charcoal as the primary energy source for urban households.

The Agency finds that cleaner alternatives such as solar or wind energy are not yet viable because most households and governments “cannot afford the price per kilowatt-hour or the hefty cost of the required infrastructure.”

Mwangi urges communities to work with the government to protect and conserve forests and notes that the Vanga community is, for instance, partnering with the Kenya Forest Services through Kenya’s Forest Conservation and Management Act of 2016.

The Act promotes community participation and aims to halt further degradation and consequent destruction of livelihoods.

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Mangroves could be the silver bullet needed to mitigate climate change, however, approximately 75 percent of mangrove forests globally remain unprotected and overexploited. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, Oct 7 2021 (IPS)

Smelly, boggy, and full of bugs, mangroves’ superpowers are well hidden. However, there is rising confidence that mangroves are the silver bullet to combat the effects of climate change.

“Mangrove ecosystems are a habitat and nursery grounds for various plants and animals and can absorb three to four times more carbon than tropical upland forests, helping to mitigate the effects of climate change,” Dr Sevvandi Jayakody, a senior lecturer at Wayamba University of Sri Lanka, tells IPS.

Mangrove forests also act as a natural defence against storm surges, including mitigating the effects of cyclones and tsunamis, says Dr Nicholas Hardman‑Mountford, Head of Oceans and Natural Resources at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Within this context, he says, Commonwealth countries are working together under the Commonwealth Blue Charter, an agreement made by all 54 member states, to actively work together to tackle ocean-related challenges and meet global commitments on sustainable ocean development.

The Blue Charter works through voluntary action groups led by ‘champion countries’, who rally around marine pollution and the sustainable blue economy.

The Mangrove Ecosystems and Livelihoods Action Group consists of 13 countries, including Australia, Bahamas, Bangladesh, Guyana, Jamaica, Kenya, Maldives, Nigeria, Pakistan, Trinidad and Tobago Vanuatu, and the United Kingdom, is championed by Sri Lanka.

Mangrove blue carbon could bolster climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience efforts, experts say. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

Hardman‑Mountford tells IPS that countries exchange knowledge centred on mangrove protection, management, and sustainability within the action group. Shared knowledge includes a wide range of topics, including policy, legislation, and regulatory frameworks.

Leveraging on the protective power of mangroves, Jayakody says that Sri Lanka is actively building its second line of defence. The country’s first line of defence, the reefs, were heavily compromised by the deadly 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami – one of the worst disasters in modern history, killing nearly 230 000 people across dozens of countries.

Such was the devastation that the government of Sri Lanka estimated losses of over $1 billion in assets and $330 million in potential output.

Worse still, approximately 35 000 people died or went missing. In Sri Lanka alone, property damage included 110 000 houses, of which 70 000 were destroyed. In all, at least 250 000 families lost their means of support.

Experts say that mangroves have immense capacity to prevent such catastrophes and combat other devastating effects of climate change.

Bolstered by growing scientific evidence, Trinidad and Tobago, the dual-island Caribbean nation, has made significant strides in building its defence using mangroves.

Dr Rahanna Juman, Acting Director at the Institute of Marine Affairs, a government-funded research institute, tells IPS that in 2014, the government of Trinidad and Tobago commissioned an aerial survey of the country. Using this data, an estimate of carbon in mangrove forests across the country was ascertained.

“This information illustrated how mangrove and other hardwood forests could offset emissions and was incorporated into the Greenhouse Gas inventory of Trinidad and Tobago. Importantly, the survey conclusively demonstrated that mangrove forests store more carbon per hectare than other hardwood forests,” Juman expounds.

In 2020, the Institute of Marine Affairs received funding from the British High Commission to fund a mangrove soil carbon assessment project involving Guyana, Suriname and Trinidad and Tobago.

Dr Juman indicates that the assessment found that “the amount of carbon in the mangrove soil was many times larger than the amount of carbon above the ground. This is an assessment that could be replicated in other Commonwealth countries because we have developed a low-cost technique of undertaking this important assessment.”

Adding that Mangroves are starting to be incorporated into the United Nations Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) programme, which means countries could potentially earn money from protecting and restoring mangroves.

Meanwhile, Hardman‑Mountford cites various challenges in exploring blue carbon because it is still an evolving area of science and policy.

Sri Lanka understands this challenge all too well. After the Tsunami, Jayakody says that the government launched vast mangrove restoration projects covering over 2 000 hectares in partnership with other agencies.

Due to limited information on mangroves, she tells IPS that a majority of these projects failed. Undeterred and leveraging on scientific research over the years, Sri Lanka is today a success story in restoring and conserving mangrove cover estimated at 19 600 hectares.

Other challenges facing countries keen on mangrove blue carbon include a lack of protection for mangroves because approximately 75 percent of mangrove forests globally remain unprotected and overexploited.

Over the years, Jayakody indicates that mangroves have been at a very high risk of destruction because their power to prevent coastal erosion, protect shorelines, and provide livelihoods for coastal communities through fisheries was not fully understood.

Hardman‑Mountford agrees, adding that mangrove forests have declined globally with a loss of between 30 to 50 percent over the past 50 years from over-harvesting, pollution, agriculture, aquaculture, and coastal development.

The Commonwealth has a huge role to play in reversing this decline.

Overall, there are 47 Commonwealth countries with a coastline.

“Nearly 90 percent of Commonwealth countries with a coast have mangroves, and at least 38 of these countries with mangroves have provided some level of protection to their mangroves. In all, 16 countries have protected about half or more of their mangroves,” he says.

This is a challenge that Sri Lanka is successfully overcoming. With an estimated 40 percent of the population in Sri Lanka living along the coastline, Jayakody says that there was an urgent need to protect both livelihoods and coastlines from further degradation.

“In 2015, Sri Lanka established the National Mangrove Expert Committee, and through that, all mangroves were mapped. More so, several new areas were brought under protection, and there have been relentless efforts to improve the communities’ understanding of the importance of mangrove ecosystem,” she says.

Further, Sri Lanka recently validated the Best Practice Guidelines on the Restoration of Mangroves in Sri Lanka and the national mangrove action plan, in line with the mangrove policy adopted in 2020.

Other countries making strides in the right direction include the Australian government’s involvement with blue carbon and especially ongoing efforts to build capacity in blue carbon science, policy and economics through multi-sectoral partnerships.

“To support its efforts in blue carbon advocacy and outreach, the Australian government launched the International Partnership for Blue Carbon (IPBC) at the UNFCCC CoP in Paris in 2015,” says Ms Heidi Prislan, a Blue Charter Adviser at the Commonwealth Secretariat.

Australia is also one of the 28 countries that refer specifically to the mitigation benefits of carbon sequestration associated with coastal wetlands in its National Greenhouse Gas Inventory. In comparison, 59 other countries mention coastal ecosystems as part of their adaptation strategies.

To increase opportunities for blue carbon to participate in the national emissions reduction scheme, the Emissions Reduction Fund, the Australian government has supported research into potential mitigation methodologies that could be implemented to generate carbon credits from domestic projects.

Equally important, she says that Commonwealth member countries have collectively made 44 national commitments to protect or restore mangroves.

As the world stares at a catastrophe from the devastating effects of climate change, the massive potential of blue carbon and, more so, mangrove blue carbon to bolster climate change adaptation, mitigation and resilience efforts can no longer be ignored.

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Young planters stand guard by mangrove forest in Shwe Thaung Yan sub township in Ayyerwady region of Myanmar. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

By Stella Paul
SHWE THAUNG YAN, Myanmar, Jan 4 2019 (IPS)

Htay Aung is having a moment. The 63-year-old retired professor of Marine Science sits at the foot of a Buddha statue atop a hill on Shwe Thaung Yan sub township, in Myanmar’s Ayyerwady region, almost in meditation. Below him, a vast thicket of mangrove glistens in the gold of a setting sun. For Aung, this stretch of mangroves—known as the Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park—is a symbol of joy, hope and all things good.

“We gave three years of hard work in planting these trees. Now they are growing tall. Soon, they will be the biggest assets of our people,” he says, pointing at the forest and the tiny dot of houses that appear in the horizon.

The restored mangrove forest in Shwe Thaung Yan sub township in Ayyerwady region of Myanmar. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Mangroves in Myanmar
This mangrove forest is spread across an area of 2,557 square kilometres (km)—almost the size of Luxembourg.

However, in most places, the density is wafer thin thanks to rampant clearing of the mangroves for space to breed shrimps and for firewood etc. According to a recent study by Pierre Taillerdat, Massimo Lupascu and Daniel Friess, Myanmar loses about 21 square km of its mangrove forests each year.

Shwe Thaung Yan, about 185 km north west of Yangon, once had a severely degraded forest where 75 percent of its mangroves had been destroyed.

Then the story changed.

In 2015, just before the rains came, a motley crowd of a few hundred men, women and youths from the fishing villages, wearing shinny plastic gumboots and carrying sling sacks filled with mangrove saplings, gathered along the muddy swamp in Myagi—one of the three villages under Shwe Thaung Yan.

For several hours a day, they planted the saplings in the muddy soil made fertile and nutrient rich by regular tides.
By October of that year, they had planted over 700,000 trees on three square km of land.

Since then, the plantation drive has taken place each year. By the end of October 2018, the community planted six million trees in three villages of under Shew Thaung Yan, covering 9 square km of land—an area over four times bigger than the city of Monaco.

Leading the planters from the front, besides Aung were U BoNi and Aung Aung Myint, experts in mangrove research and costal ecosystems restoration. The three are currently associated with Worldview International Foundation (WIF)—a Norwegian charity co-founded by Arne Fjortoft, a former journalist turned politician and a renowned environmentalist.

“We used the satellite images, studied the images meticulously and created a map that shows the exact patches in the mangrove forest that had gone bare. We shared this information with the villagers. We also marked the areas and divided the planters in several groups and assigned each group a certain area,” BoNi tells IPS.

Before the plantation started, WIF entered into an active partnership with Myanmar’s Ministry of Environmental Conservation and two of the country’s leading educational institutions, Myeik and Pathein universities. The land area for planting mangroves—over 7 square km in all—was provided by Pathein University, which is also involved in studying marine science along the coast of Shwe Thaung Yan.

Worldview International Foundation (WIF) signboard by a mangrove forest in Shwe Thaung Yan sub township in Ayyerwady region of Myanmar. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Mitigating Climate Change
Mangroves make up only 0.7 percent of the world’s forests, but they have the potential to store about 2.5 times as much CO2 as humans produce globally each year. A 2017 study estimated that the total amount of carbon held in the world’s mangroves was around 4.2 billion tonnes. If this whole amount were released as CO2, it would be equivalent to the annual emissions of China and the United States put together.

Another study said that Myanmar’s mangroves — which is 3 percent of global mangrove forests, shows “huge (blue carbon) potential if conservation can prevent further emissions from their loss and encourage future carbon sequestration through restoration.” So, blue carbon mitigation at the national scale “is well aligned with the Paris Agreement and associated Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) for some nations,” the study says.

Cameron Keith Richards, professor at Southern Cross University, Australia, visited Thor Heyerdahl Climate Park in 2016 to evaluate the mangrove restoration and its blue carbon stock. In his validation report, which helped the project qualify for selling its carbon stocks, Richards summarised the project saying that it was “reasonably assumed to represent an overall 4.3 million tons of C02 within a 20-year lifecycle of the current trees and additional trees to be planted in the project.”

The mangrove project has opened ways for alternative livelihoods and skill-building opportunities for the community. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Community Development
Shew Thaung Yan is primarily a fishing sub township where catching and selling of fish remain the source of sustenance for its nearly 11,000-strong community.

However, the mangrove project has opened ways for alternative livelihoods and skill-building opportunities for the community: during the monsoon when there is little or no fishing in the sea, the community members earn wages by planting mangrove saplings in the forests around them.

Women of the village have also started a clam farming collective–a first for the community. The collective which presently has 55 members, is running from a site that was earlier used as a nursery for growing mangrove saplings. The women visit the mangrove forest where they collect clams and bring it back to the farm where each of them have a 6 to 10 ft enclosure that are regularly flooded by the tidal waves. The clams have been “sowed’ into the slushy farm soil, where they will thrive and grow fat, feeding on the nutrients brought by the tides.

This is a zero-investment livelihood initiative that promises local women a good earning opportunity, explains Shwe Sandar Oo, the coordinator of the farming project. “The land is free, the clams are free and we have already connected them to buyers,” she tells IPS. The buyers, she says, are hoteliers in Chaung Tha, a beach town popular among domestic and foreign tourists. Big, fleshy clams are high in demand among the tourists and usually fetch half a dollar each.

Clam farmer Thein Thein Sein is full of happiness as she looks upon her zero-investment clam farm in Myagi village of Shwe Thaung Yan sub township in Ayyerwady region of Myanmar. Credit: Stella Paul/IPS

Thein Thein Nwe, one of the clam farmers says that it’s the zero-investment that drew her to the collective. Earlier this year, Nwe’s eldest daughter dropped out of school at grade 10, after she failed to pass her grade 10 tests. With the income she earns from her clam farm, the 42-year-old fisherwoman now hopes to send her daughter to a private coach, so she could retake the tests.

Many in the village of Maygi have received clean cookstoves and solar lamps provided by WIF. The village has a media centre where school-going children of the village are learning various skills including basic computer operations, photography and embroidery. Run by WIF, the centre offers scholarship girl students who are promising but too poor to afford tuition fees.

Way to the Future
As 2019 begins, the planters in Shwe Thaung Yan are gearing up to plant two billion trees–their biggest plantation drive to date. Once finished, restoration drive of Shwe Thaung Yan would be complete and the restored forest would store 300 million tonnes of CO2, Uboni says. “After this, we are going to Yangon Division and also the delta division. So, in the new year, we will go to Bago and Mon state to plant mangrove,” he announces.

Aung, on the other hand, is more focused on the underwater marine life, especially conserving the seagrass and the coral bed both of which are available in the sea around Shwe Thaung Yan.

“The seagrass can stock much more blue carbon than the land trees or mangrove. It is also what feeds Dugong or sea cow—a critically endangered sea mammal. So, with the help of WIF and Pathein University, we now aim is to build a marine sanctuary around Shwe Thaung Yan,” he says.

The idea has received the approval of Daw Si Si Hla Bu, the rector of Pathein University. “I want to see our university making significant contribution to coastal ecosystem restoration,” Hla Bu tells IPS.

Arne Fjortoft tells IPS that the funding for the proposed marine sanctuary could be raised from selling off the carbon stock of mangrove forests. For Fjortoft, however, the mangrove restoration, vocational trainings, clam farming and marine life conservation are all part of a big, single picture: “The final goal here is to help bring sustainable development for 12 million people of the country’s coastal communities. And that’s the future we are hoping to see.”

A fish catch has come in. Since the community from the Sanwoma fishing village have begun restoring the mangroves, the lagoon has seen a marginal increase in fish stock. However, the stock in the ocean remains depleted. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IP

By Albert Oppong-Ansah
ACCRA, Dec 20 2018 (IPS)

It was just three and a half years ago that the Sanwoma fishing village, which sits between the sea and the mouth of the Ankobra River on the west coast of Ghana, experienced perpetual flooding that resulted in a loss of property and life.

This was because the local mangrove forests that play a key role in combating the effects of coastal erosion and rising sea levels had been wantonly and indiscriminately harvested. “Of a total 118-hectares mangrove, we had depleted 115 hectares,” Paul Nato Codjoe, a fisherman and a resident of the community explains.

The fisherfolk here depended heavily on the Ankobra wetland mangroves for cheap and available sources of fuel for fish processing. Wood from the mangroves was also used as material for construction, and sold to generate income.

But a video shown by officials of Hen Mpoano (HM), a local non-governmental organisation, helped the community understand the direct impact of their indiscriminate felling.

And it spurred the fishfolk into action. Led by Odikro Nkrumah, Chief of the Sanwoma, the community commenced a mangrove restoration plan, planting about 45,000 seeds over the last three years.

Rosemary Ackah, 38, one of the women leaders in the community, tells IPS that the vulnerability to the high tides and the resultant impact was one of the reasons for actively participating in the re-planting.

HM, with support from the United States Agency for International Development-Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP),provided periodic community education about the direct and indirect benefits of the mangrove forests.

In Ghana, there are about 90 lagoons and 10 estuaries with their associated marshes and mangrove swamps along the 550-km coastline stretch.

Dr Isaac Okyere, a lecturer at the Department of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences, University of Cape Coast, explains to IPS in an interview that the conservation of mangrove forests is essential for countries like Ghana, where the marine fishery is near collapse, with landings of important fish species at 14 percent of the record high of 140,000 metric tons 20 years ago.

The fisheries sector in Ghana supports the livelihoods of 2.2 million people — about 10 percent of the population.

Carl Fiati, Director of Natural Resource at the Environmental Protection Agency speaking in an interview with IPS, explains: “Ghana is in a precarious situation where many of the stocks are near collapse and species like the sardine and jack mackerel cannot be found again if we do not take steps to conserve, restock and protect them. A visit to the market shows that sardines, for instance, are no more.”

The Sanwoma community is not unique in the degradation of their mangroves. According to Okyere, the Butuah and Essei lagoons of Sekondi-Takoradi, the Fosu lagoon of Cape Coast, the Korle and Sakumo lagoons of Accra and the Chemu lagoon of Tema are typical examples of degraded major lagoons in the country.

“Most of the lagoons, especially those located in urban areas, have been heavily polluted within the last decade or two.” Domestic and industrial effluent discharge, sewage, plastics, and other solid waste and heavy metal contaminants (lead, mercury, arsenic, etc.) from industrial activities are blamed for this.

Rosemary Ackah is part of the women’s group that was assigned to collect seedlings used to grown a nursery of mangrove trees. Credit: Albert Oppong-Ansah/IPS

According to Ackah, many of the women in the community also became involved in the mangrove regeneration because of the positive resultant effect of clean air that would reduce airborne diseases in the community.

“As women, we take care of our husbands and children when they are ill so we thought we should seize this opportunity to engage in this as health insurance for our families,” she added.

Ackah says the women’s group was assigned to collect seedlings used to grown a nursery. They also watered the seedlings.

“We also played a significant role during transplanting. When our husbands dig the ground we put in the seedlings and cover the side with sand. It is a joy to be part of such a great replanting project, that will help provide more fuelwood for our domestic use,” Ackah told IPS.

Codjoe says that thanks to the technical assistance from the project, the community developed an action plan for restoration and is also enforcing local laws to prevent excessive mangrove harvesting.

The community has taken control of its future, and particularly its natural resources, and has established the Ankobra Mangrove Restoration Committee to guide and oversee how the mangrove is used and maintained.

To ensure that the re-planting is sustainable, Codjoe explains that the community has, in agreement, instituted a by-law that all trees within 50 meters of the river must not be harvested. Anyone doing so will have to replant them.

It is uncertain if indiscriminate felling of the mangroves continues to happen as many in the community acknowledge the positive results of the re-planting.

“We have seen positive signs because of the re-generation, the flooding has been drastically reduced,” says Ackah.

She has witnessed another direct improvement: the high volume and large size of the shrimp, one of the delicacies in Ghana, that they local community harvests. “This has really boosted our local business and improved our diet,” she says.

Codjoe says the fish stock in the river increased and agreed that a high volume of shrimp was harvested.

Ackah adds that the project donors SFMP and local implementer HM also helped them reduce dependence on the mangroves for their livelihoods and created a resilience plan in the form of a Village Savings and Loan Scheme.

The scheme, she explains, has financially empowered members to address social and economic challenges they face, thus reducing dependence on fisheries and mangroves in terms of the need for income.

In West Africa, the economic value of nature’s contributions to people per km2 per year is valued at 4,500 dollars for mangrove coastal protection services, 40,000 dollars for water purification services, and 2,800 dollars for coastal carbon sequestration services.

This is according to an Assessment Report on the state of biodiversity in Africa, and on global land degradation and restoration, conducted under the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Fiati says that Ghana’s new draft Coastal and Marine Habitat Regulation policy, which encapsulates the protection, management and sustainable use of mangroves, will be ready and sent to the Attorney General’s Department this month to be signed into law.

And the local fisherfolk of Sanwoma are assisting in sharing their experiences and knowledge.

In the meantime, the Sanwoma are ensuring that the importance of the preservation of their mangrove forests is passed down to young people.

“Because of a lack of knowledge about the importance of such a rich resource we were destroying it. And it was at a fast rate. Now I know we have a treasure. As a leader, I will use it to sustainably and protect it for the next generation. Also, I will make sure I educate children about such a resource so they will keep it safe,” Nkrumah told IPS.

Rosa Herrera returns to the village after spending the morning digging for clams in the mangroves that border Isla de Méndez in Jiquilisco bay, in the southeastern department of Usulután. The struggle to put food on the table is constant in fishing villages in El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
ISLA DE MÉNDEZ, El Salvador, Mar 20 2017 (IPS)

After an exhausting morning digging clams out of the mud of the mangroves, Rosa Herrera, her face tanned by the sun, arrives at this beach in southeastern El Salvador on board the motorboat Topacio, carrying her yield on her shoulders.

For her morning’s catch – 126 Andara tuberculosa clams, known locally as “curiles”, in great demand in El Salvador – she was paid 5.65 dollars by the Manglarón Cooperative, of which she is a member.

“Today it went pretty well,” she told IPS. “Sometimes it doesn’t and we earn just two or three dollars,” said the 49-year-old Salvadoran woman, who has been harvesting clams since she was 10 in these mangroves in the bay of Jiquilisco, near Isla de Méndez, the village of 500 families where she lives in the southeastern department of Usulután.“I have left my life in the mangroves, I was not able to go to school to learn to read and write, but I am happy that I have provided an education for all my children, thanks to the clams.” -- Rosa Herrera

Isla de Méndez is a village located on a peninsula, bordered to the south by the Pacific ocean, and to the north by the bay. Life has not been easy there in recent months.

Fishing and harvesting of shellfish, the main sources of food and income here, have been hit hard by environmental factors and by gang violence, a problem which has put this country on the list of the most violent nations in the world.

For fear of the constant raids by gangs, the fishers shortened their working hours, particularly in the night time.

“We were afraid, so nobody would go out at night, and fishing this time of year is better at night, but that is now changing a little,“ said Berfalia de Jesús Chávez, one of the founding members of the Las Gaviotas Cooperative, created in 1991 and made up of 43 women.

But the gang was dismantled and, little by little, life is returning to normal, said the local people interviewed by IPS during a two-day stay in the village.

“Climate change has also reduced the fish catch, as have the la Niña and el Niño climate phenomena,” said María Teresa Martínez, the head of the cooperative, who added however that fishing has always had periods of prosperity and scarcity.

Ofilio Herrera (L) buys a kilo of fish freshly caught by Álvaro Eliseo Cruz off the coast of Isla de Méndez, a fishing village in southeastern El Salvador. Cruz caught 15 kilos of fish this day, including red porgy and mojarras, which he uses to sell in the market and feed his family. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The women in Las Gaviotas are making an effort to repair their three canoes and their nets to start fishing again, a real challenge when a good part of the productive activity has also been affected by the violence.

Fishing and selling food to tourists, in a small restaurant on the bay, are the cooperative’s main activities. But at the moment the women are forced to buy the seafood to be able to cater to the few visitors who arrive at the village.

“Now tourists are beginning to come again,” said a local resident who preferred not to give his name, who had to close his restaurant due to extortion from the gangs. Only recently did he pluck up the courage to reopen his small business.

“Before, at this time, around noon, all those tables would have been full of tourists,” he said, pointing to the empty tables at his restaurant.

In Isla de Méndez, each day is a constant struggle to put food on the table, as it is for rural families in this Central American country of 6.3 million people.

According to the report “Food and Nutrition Security: a path towards human development”, published in Spanish in July 2016 by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the prevalence of undernourishment – food intake insufficient to meet dietary energy requirements – in El Salvador stands at 12.4 percent of the population.

The United Nations are still defining the targets to be achieved within the Sustainable Development Goals, but in the case of El Salvador this prevalence should at least be cut in half, Emilia González, representative of programmes at the FAO office in El Salvador, told IPS.

“Sometimes we only manage to catch four little fishes for our family to eat, and nothing to sell, but there is always something to put on the table,” said María Antonia Guerrero, who belongs to the 37-member Cooperative Association of Fish Production.

“Sometimes what we catch does not even cover the cost of the gasoline we use,” she said.

Because of the cooperative’s limited equipment (just 10 boats and two motors), they can only go fishing two or three times a week. When fishing is good, she added, they can catch 40 dollars a week of fish.

The local fishers respect the environmental requirement to use a net that ensures the reproduction of the different species of fish.

“We do it to avoid killing the smallest fish, otherwise the species would be wiped out and we would have nothing to eat,” said Sandra Solís, another member of the cooperative.

González, of FAO, said one of the U.N.’s agency’s mandates is to strive for food and nutrition security for families, adding that only by empowering them in this process can their standard of living be improved.

“We have worked a great deal in these communities for families to be the managers of their own development,” she said.

In this community, efforts have been made to develop projects to produce organic compost and to treat solid waste, said Ofilio Herrera with the Community Development Association in Area 1.

More ambitious plans include setting up a processing plant for coconut milk and cashew nuts and cashew apples, he added.

Rosa Herrera, meanwhile, walks towards her house with a slight smile on her face, pleased with having earned enough to feed her daughter, her father and herself that day.

As a single mother, she is proud that she has been able to raise her seven children, six of whom no longer live at home, on her own.

“Because I had to work to get food I was not able to go to school. We were eight siblings; the younger ones studied, and the older ones worked. My father and mother were very poor, so the older of us worked to support the younger ones. Four of us did not learn to read and write. The others learned as adults, but I didn’t,” she said.

“I have left my life in the mangroves, I was not able to go to school to learn to read and write, but I am happy that I have provided an education for all my children, thanks to the clams,” she said.

A young boy stands near mangroves planted near his home in the village of Entale in Sri Lanka’s northwest Puttalam District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Lyndal Rowlands
UNITED NATIONS, Feb 20 2017 (IPS)

Children growing up in the Seychelles think of the ocean as their backyard, says Ronald Jean Jumeau, Seychelles’ ambassador for climate change.

“Our ocean is the first and eternal playground of our children, they don’t go to parks they go to the ocean, they go to the beach, they go to the coral reefs, and all that is just collapsing around them,” Jumeau told IPS.

The tiny country off the East Coast of Africa is one of 39 UN member states known as small island states, or as Jumeau likes to call them: “large ocean states.”

Ambassadors and delegations from these 39 countries often speak at UN headquarters in New York steadfastly sounding the alarm about the changes to the world’s environment they are witnessing first hand. Jumeau sees these island states as sentinels or guardians of the oceans. He prefers these names to being called the canary in the gold mine because, he says: “the canaries usually end up dead.”

Yet while much is known about the threats rising oceans pose to the world’s small island states, much less is known about how these large ocean states help defend everyone against the worst impacts of climate change by storing “blue carbon.”

“We are not emitting that much carbon dioxide but we are taking everyone else’s carbon dioxide into our oceans,” says Jumeau.

Despite decades of research, the blue carbon value of oceans and coastal regions is only beginning to be fully appreciated for its importance in the fight against climate change.

“There’s proof that mangroves, seas salt marshes and sea grasses absorb more carbon (per acre) than forests, so if you’re saying then to people ‘don’t cut trees’ than we should also be saying ‘don’t cut the underwater forests’,” says Jumeau.

This is just one of the reasons why the Seychelles has banned the clearing of mangroves. The temptation to fill in mangrove forests is high, especially for a nation with so little land, but Jumeau says there are many benefits to sustaining them.

As well as absorbing carbon, mangroves guard against erosion and protect coral reefs. They also provide nurseries for fish.

Its not just coastal forests that take carbon out of the atmosphere. Oceans themselves also absorb carbon, although according to NASA their role is more like inhaling and exhaling.

The Seychelles, whose total ocean territory is 3000 times larger than its islands, is also thinking about how it can protect the ocean so it can continue to perform this vital function.

The nation plans to designate specific navigation zones within its territories to allow other parts of the ocean a chance to recover from the strains associated with shipping.

The navigation zones will “relieve the pressure on the ocean by strengthening the resilience of the oceans to absorb more carbon dioxide and ocean acidification,” says Jumeau. He acknowledges the plan will only work if all countries do the same but says you have to start somewhere.

Fortunately other countries are also, finally, beginning to recognise the importance of protecting the world’s oceans.

Isabella Lövin, Sweden’s deputy prime minister and climate minister told IPS that the world is going “in the totally wrong direction,” when it comes to achieving the goal of sustainable oceans and life below water.

“If you look at the trends right now, you see more and more overfishing, we are seeing more and more pollution, plastic litter coming into our oceans, and we’re also seeing all the stress that the ocean is under due to climate change, acidification of the water, but also the warming and sea level rises.

“All of this is putting a tremendous, tremendous pressure on our oceans,” said Lövin.

Together with Fiji, Sweden is convening a major UN Ocean Conference in June this year.

The conference aims to bring together not only governments but also the private sector and non-governmental organisations to create a more coordinated approach to sustaining oceans. It will look at the key role that oceans play in climate change but also other issues such as the alarming prospect that there will be more plastic in our seas than fish by the year 2050.

“There’s 3 billion people around the world that are primarily dependent on marine resources for their survival and so they depend on what the ocean can produce, so it’s about food security, it’s also about livelihoods for hundreds of millions of people that depend on small scale fisheries mostly in developing countries,” said Lövin.

Lövin also noted that rich countries need to work together with developing countries to address these issues, because the demand for fish in rich countries has put a strain on the global fish stocks that developing countries rely on.

“Rich countries … have been over-fishing with industrial methods for decades and now when they European oceans are being emptied more or less we have depleted our resources and then we import and we fish (over long distances in) developing countries’ waters.”

“We need to make sure that fish as a resource is conserved and protected for future generations.”

Excerpt:

By Malini Shankar
CHIDAMBARAM TALUQ, CUDDALORE DISTRICT, India, Nov 13 2015 (IPS)

At the dawn of Indian Independence, Government of India’s commitment to food security – in addition to the impact of the Bengal Famine – was haunted by corruption, hoarding and mismanagement, resulting in ongoing food insecurity among the indigenous people in Tamilnadu and Orissa that lasted for more than five decades,

When the Asian Tsunami struck the coast of Tamilnadu in December 2004, the Irulas, who were teetering on the verge of starvation with their hunter gatherer lifestyle, were stuck between the devil and the deep blue sea on the coastal forests of the Pichavaram mangrove forests in Chidambaram Taluq (11°25’45.55″N 79°47’0.23″E) of Cuddalore district. The mangroves themselves, with their aerial roots, had reduced the power of the killer waves, saving the lives of thousands of Irulas. Despite that, their exposure to starvation widened because the tsunami deluged their rice paddies with salt water and the Irulas’ hunting and gathering skills were unable to produce more than one or two days’ of food each week.

“The aerial roots of the mangroves regulate tides and nurture the silt in the coastal ecosystem thereby sustaining diverse varieties of fish and crops” says Dr. Gyanamurthy, a marine biologist at the Pichavaram field station of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF) in Pichavaram, Cuddalore district. They fix nitrogen in the soil thus supporting cultivation of saline resistant crops like cereals, pulses, lentils and even spawn unparalleled fish diversity in the creeks offering the cleanest mechanism of sustainable eco-friendly food security to the marginalised outcastes. But such scientific documentation nevertheless needed administrative support and legal regimen to administer food security for the impoverished and marginalised indigenous people.

The enactment of the Forest Rights Act the Biodiversity Act Forest Rights Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, the Food Security Act and the National Disaster Management Act together have trickled down to provide food and livelihood security for the weakest sections of society. In an exclusive interview with IPS, Professor M.S. Swaminathan, a former parliamentarian who is a leader in India’s Green Revolution and founder of the MSSRF, said: “The Forest Rights Act provides an opportunity for combining conservation with livelihood security; the National Food Security Act 2013 which makes the usual access to food a fundamental right for nearly 70 – 80 per cent of our population; and the Biodiversity Act provides a method by which those who conserve biodiversity are given some kind of recognition. We have in the national plan priority protection, the Farmers’ Rights Act. For the first time in the world there is an Act which combines farmers and builders’ rights in the one Act. The National Food Security Act, the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and various other Acts which have come (into force) in recent times, they all are reinforcing each other”.

India, as one of the stake holders in the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation’s CFS (Committee on Food Security), was obliged to promote policy coherence in line with the Voluntary Guidelines for the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security, and in that context, reaffirms the importance of nutrition as an essential element of food security. It followed the introduction of the Food Security Bill in the Indian Parliament in 2013 and enactment in September that year.

India is the only country to have taken up a slew of legislative measures to combat hunger. “The Food Security Act in India is perhaps the singular and greatest legislative contribution of India to humanity in terms of food security,” said Prof. M.S. Swaminathan. “The Biodiversity Act propagates plant and animal genetics thereby assuring the farmers’ livelihood security. The Forest Rights Act protects the right to life and livelihoods of forest dwelling tribes assuring the marginalised forest dwellers nutrition and food security along with biodiversity conservation. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act assures the rural populace of a minimum standard of wages and minimum period of employment.”,

“Further, the Disaster Management Act lends state support and allows officers to take expedient legal measures to combat hunger during exigencies, to reduce disaster risk in the aftermath of future calamities,” he said.

Two elements are fundamental in order to make substantial and rapid progress towards global food security: coherence and convergence among policies and programmes of countries, donors and other stakeholders when addressing the underlying causes of hunger, and the recognition of the human rights dimensions of food security.

The Right to Food Team supports government, parliamentarians, civil society organizations and other stakeholders with the implementation of the Right to Food Guidelines in their work. The Right to Food Team provides technical and capacity-building assistance in the areas of assessment, institutional analysis, policy dialogue and monitoring; all of which are relevant for the right to adequate food.

But the Asian Tsunami was quite literally a watershed in many areas of governance. The Collector of Cuddalore district, G.S. Bedi, an officer of the Indian Administrative Service of the Tamilnadu cadre, included these half starving and traumatised survivors of the Asian Tsunami in the Scheduled Tribe List. Once included the Irulas were mentored about the exercise of their rights by NGOs like the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation and BEDROC among others. MSSRF also took up livelihoods training programmes to offer alternate livelihood options to the Irulas. MSSRF imparted training in crab trapping, net fishing, sustainable eco-friendly aquaculture, net making, boat building and allied activities making the tribe self- reliant in livelihood security and offering and food security.

Text and pictures by Malini Shankar

By Roger Hamilton-Martin
LONDON, Jul 31 2015 (IPS)

The importance of mangroves in protecting coastal areas under threat due to sea level rise caused by climate change may have been underestimated, according to new research.

A joint study between researchers at the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom and the Universities of Auckland and Waikato in New Zealand looked at how mangrove forests respond to elevated sea levels.

“Within the mangrove forest, these channels become shallower through organic matter from the trees, reduced sediment resuspensions (caused by the mangroves) and sediment trapping (also caused by the mangroves) and the sea bed begins to rise, with bed elevation increasing a few millimetres per year until the area is no longer inundated by the tide.”

The team predicted what happens to different types of estuaries and river deltas when sea levels rise.

Taking New Zealand mangrove data as the basis of a new modelling system and using cutting-edge mathematical simulations, they found areas without mangroves are likely to widen from erosion and more water will encroach inwards, whereas mangrove regions prevent this effect. This is likely due to soil building up around their mesh-like roots and acting to reduce energy from waves and tidal currents.

In modelling sea level rise in the study, the ability of mangrove forests to gradually create a buffer between sea and land occurs even when the area is subjected to potential sea level rise of up to 0.5 mm per year. Even after sea level rise, the mangroves showed an enhanced ability to maintain an elevation in the upper intertidal zone.

Associate Professor Karin Bryan of the University of Waikato said, “In New Zealand, mangroves have been traditionally viewed as undesirable as they take over areas where there were once sandy beaches. In other countries, this is not the case as they are seen as a buffer for climate change in low level areas.”

Other studies have shown mangroves have the ability to remove carbon from the atmosphere and protect people from hazards such as tsunamis.

Associate Professor Giovanni Coco of the University of Auckland said, “As we anticipate changes caused by climate change, it’s important to know the effect sea level rise might have, particularly around our coasts.

“Mangroves appear to be resilient to sea level rise and are likely to be able to sustain such climatic change. The implications for the New Zealand coastline are considerable and will require new thinking in terms of sediment budgets and response to climatic changes.”

CODRINGTON, Barbuda. The fisheries sector in the CARICOM Region is an important source of income. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Jul 8 2015 (IPS)

Thanks to its varied geography and climate, the Caribbean region is one of the world’s greatest centers of unique biodiversity. With most people living near the coast, marine ecosystems, including mangroves, beaches, lagoons and cays, are essential not only for biodiversity, but as protection from storms. Many are now threatened, along with the coral reefs the region is famous for.

KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent. Rising sea levels haves resulted in the relocation of houses and erection of this sea defence in Layou, a town in southwestern St. Vincent. Credit: Kenton X. Chance/IPS

By Kitty Stapp
NEW YORK, Jun 18 2015 (IPS)

From constructing barriers against rising sea levels to rehabilitating mangroves and providing agrometeorology services, the Caribbean isn’t waiting for a new international agreement on climate change to start implementing adaptation measures. But funding to roll out such projects on the necessary scale remains a key issue, and many communities remain desperately vulnerable to storms and flooding.

Young mangrove plants tended by women beneficiaries from the Small Fishers Federation of Lanka have helped the Puttalam Lagoon regain some of its lost natural glory. The success of the programme has prompted the government to support an island-wide project worth 3.4 million dollars. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
KALPITIYA, Sri Lanka, Jun 17 2015 (IPS)

Weekends and public holidays are deadly for one of Sri Lanka’s most delicate ecosystems – that is when the island’s 8,815 hectares of mangroves come under threat.

“The mangroves are a part of our life, our culture. We destroy them, we destroy ourselves.” -- Douglas Thisera, also known as Sri Lanka's Mangrove Master
With public officials, forest rangers and NGO workers on holiday, no one is around to enforce conservation laws designed to protect these endangered zones. Except the locals, that is.

Residents of the Kalpitiya Peninsula in the northwest Puttalam District are no strangers to the wanton destruction of the area’s natural bounty. Kalpitiya is home to the largest mangrove block in Sri Lanka, the Puttalam Lagoon, as well as smaller mangrove systems on the shores of the Chilaw Lagoon, 150 km north of the capital, Colombo.

For centuries these complex wetlands have protected fisher communities against storms and sea-surges, while the forests’ underwater root system has nurtured nurseries and feeding grounds for scores of aquatic species.

Perhaps more important, in a country still living with the ghosts of the 2004 Asian Tsunami, mangroves have been found to be a coastline’s best defense against tidal waves and tsunamis.

Many poor fisher families in western Sri Lanka also rely heavily on mangroves for sustenance, with generation after generation deriving protein sources from the rich waters or sustainably harvesting the forests’ many by-products.

But in Sri Lanka today, as elsewhere in the world, mangroves face a range of risks. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the unique ecosystems, capable of storing up to 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare in their biomass, are being felled at three to five times the rate of other forests.

Over a quarter of the world’s mangrove cover has already been irrevocably destroyed, driven by aquaculture, agriculture, unplanned and unsustainable coastal development and over-use of resources.

On the west coast of Sri Lanka, despite government’s pledges to protect the country’s remaining forests, the covert clearing of mangroves continues – albeit at a slower rate than in the past.

But a small army of land defenders, newly formed and highly dedicated, is promising to turn this tide.

Douglas Thisera, better known as the Mangrove Master, has spent the last two-and-a-half decades protecting the mangroves of Sri Lanka’s northwest Puttalam District. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

When residents become rangers

They call him the ‘Mangrove Master’, but his real name is Douglas Thisera. A fisherman turned vigilante, he is the director for conservation at the Small Fisheries Foundation of Lanka (Sudeesa) and spends his days patrolling every nook of the Chilaw Lagoon for signs of illegal destruction.

“Suddenly we will see earth movers and other machinery clearing large tracts of mangroves – by the time pubic officials are alerted, the destruction is already done,” he tells IPS.

This pattern follows decades of state-sanctioned deforestation that began in the early 90s, when an aggressive government-backed prawn-farming scheme was taking root around the lagoon and private corporations as well as politically-linked business enterprises were eyeing and clearing the mangroves indiscriminately.

For years Thisera tried to draft the local community into conservation efforts, but they were up against a Goliath.

He recalls one instance, back in 1994, when a powerful politician cleared a 150-metre stretch of forest almost overnight. “We were helpless then, we did not have the organisational capacity to take on such figures.”

By 2012, prawn farming, salt panning, solid waste disposal and hotel construction for the country’s thriving tourist sector had conspired to cut Sri Lanka’s mangrove cover by 80 percent, according to some estimates.

Today, under the aegis of a major mangrove conservation programme in the region, Thisera not only has financial backing for his efforts – he has a network of residents just as dedicated to the task as he is.

The project is led by Sudeesa, whose chairman, Anuradha Wickramasinghe, believed that only “community-based” action could hope to save the disappearing forests.

But this was easier said than done.

Poverty stalks the population of Sri Lanka’s northwest coast, and the most recent government statistics indicate that the average income among fisher families is just 16 dollars a month, with 53 percent of the population here living below the national poverty line.

Unemployment is roughly 20 percent higher than the island-wide average of 4.1 percent, and most families spend every waking moment struggling to put food on the table.

So Sudeesa created a micro-credit scheme to incentivize conservation efforts, and tailored the programme towards women. Women are offered a range of loans at extremely low interest rates to start home-based sustainable ventures. In exchange, they care for young saplings, help replant stretches of mangrove forest and take it upon themselves to prevent illegal clearing for commercial purposes.

Together they have planted 170,000 saplings covering an area of 860 hectares in the district – and they are working to multiply this number.

Futures tied to the land

The entire scheme relies on community action.

Women are put in charge of designated locations, mostly close to their homes. When encroachment or illegal harvesting takes place, they use local networks and cell phones to get the word out.

Here, the Thisera plays a pivotal role, acting as an intermediary between local watchdogs and networks of public officials, which he can activate when the women raise a red flag.

Last year this rudimentary conservation machine managed to halt encroachment by a private company with a stake in prawn farming by forcing it to dismantle fencing around the mangroves and retreat to demarcations laid down in government maps of the area.

Thisera says powerful business interests present the biggest menace to locals. Although an epidemic in the late 1990s decimated most of the prawn farms, leaving large, empty man-made tanks in place of mangrove ecosystems, companies have been reluctant to retreat and many continue to pay taxes on former areas of operations.

“They want to keep a legal hold on the land for other purposes,” Thisera explains, such as tourism on the northern ridge of the Puttalam Lagoon that has seen a revival since the end of the country’s civil war in 2009.

Already two islands have been leased out to private companies, though no major construction operations have yet begun.

When they do, however, they will be forced to reckon with Thisera and his unofficial rangers.

“The mangroves are a part of our life, our culture,” Thisera explains. “We destroy them, we destroy ourselves.”

Self-confidence and self-reliance

Cut off from the country’s commercial hubs and major markets, women in this district have long had to rely on their wits to survive.

Take Anne Priyanthi, a 52-year-old widow with two children who until three years ago had struggled to feed her family. She tried to lift herself out of poverty by applying for a bank loan – but was refused on the basis that she did not “meet the criteria”.

In 2012 Sudeesa granted her a loan of 10,000 rupees – about 74 dollars – which she used to start a small pig farm. Today, she earns a monthly income of 25,000 rupees, or 182 dollars.

It seems a pittance – but it means her kids can stay in school and in these impoverished parts that is a monumental success.

Another beneficiary of Sudeesa’s conservation-livelihood project is 58-year-old Primrose Fernando, who now works as a coordinator for the NGO. The widow has three daughters, one of whom has a minor disability.

With her loan she was able to set up a small grocery shop for the disabled daughter and also invest in an ornamental fish breeding business.

“Without this assistance I would have been left destitute,” Fernando tells IPS.

Since 1994 Sudeesa had given out loans to the tune of 54 million rupees (over 400,000 dollars) to 3,900 women in the Puttalam District. Officials say that the loans have a repayment rate of over 75 percent.

By conserving the mangroves, thousands of women have also carved out a better life for themselves and their families and no longer spend every waking moment wondering where their next meal will come from. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

Now the loans scheme falls under a registered public organisation called Sudeesa Social Enterprises Corporation, of which 683 of the most active women are shareholders.

“It is the shareholders who run the orgainsation now, who decide on loans, repayments and follow-up action in case of defaulters,” explains Malan Appuhami, a Sudeesa accountant.

The operation is not your average micro-credit scheme – interest rates are less than three percent, and since the women are all part of the same community, they are more interested in helping each other succeed than hunting down defaulters.

For instance during the months of June to September, when rough seas limit a fisher family’s catch, the shareholders create more flexible repayment plans.

In a country where the female unemployment rate is over two-and-a-half times that of the male rate, and almost twice the national figure of 4.2 percent, the conservation-livelihood scheme is a kind of oasis in an otherwise barren desert for women – particularly older women without a formal education, as many in the Puttalam District are – seeking paid work.

Suvineetha de Silva, a Sudeesa credit officer, tells IPS that there has been a visible shift in women’s outlooks and attitudes – no longer ragged and shy, they now ripple with the confidence of those who have taken matters into their own hands.

Some have even been able to send their kids to university, de Silva says, something that was “unheard of” a decade ago, when the simple act of completing primary school was considered a luxury for youth whose parents needed the extra labour to help feed the family.

Other women are spending more time at home, with the result that sustainable cottage industries like home bakeries, dress making ventures and even hairdressing operations are thriving.

Best of all is that Puttalam’s mangroves now have a fighting chance, with determined women keeping watch over them.

Globally, an estimated 100 million people live in the vicinity of mangrove forests. What would it mean for the future of biodiversity if all of them followed Sri Lanka’s example?

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

This article is part of a special series entitled ‘The Future Is Now: Inside the World’s Most Sustainable Communities’. Read the other articles in the series here.

This reporting series was conceived in collaboration with Ecosocialist Horizons

Young mangrove plants tended by women beneficiaries from the Small Fishers Federation of Lanka have helped the Puttalam Lagoon regain some of its lost natural glory. The success of the programme has prompted the government to support an island-wide project worth 3.4 million dollars. Credit: Amantha Perera/IPS

By Amantha Perera
KALPITIYA, Sri Lanka, Jun 16 2015 (IPS)

Weekends and public holidays are deadly for one of Sri Lanka’s most delicate ecosystems – that is when the island’s 8,815 hectares of mangroves come under threat.

With public officials, forest rangers and NGO workers on holiday, no one is around to enforce conservation laws designed to protect these endangered zones. Except the locals, that is.

Residents of Kalpitiya, a coastal area in the northwest Puttalam District, are no strangers to this phenomenon. Kalpitiya is home to the largest mangrove block in Sri Lanka, the Puttalam Lagoon, as well as smaller mangrove systems on the shores of the Chilaw Lagoon, 150 km north of the capital, Colombo.

Perhaps more important, in a country still living with the ghosts of the 2004 Asian Tsunami, mangroves have been found to be a coastline’s best defense against similar natural disasters.

Many poor fisher families in western Sri Lanka also rely heavily on mangroves for sustenance, with generation after generation deriving protein sources from the rich waters or sustainably harvesting the forests’ many by-products.

But in Sri Lanka today, as elsewhere in the world, mangroves face a range of risks. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that the unique ecosystems, capable of storing up to 1,000 tonnes of carbon per hectare in their biomass, are being felled at three to five times the rate of other forests.

Over a quarter of the world’s mangrove cover has already been irrevocably destroyed, driven by aquaculture, agriculture, unplanned and unsustainable coastal development and over-use of resources.

On the west coast of Sri Lanka, despite government’s pledges to protect the country’s remaining forests, the covert clearing of mangroves continues – albeit at a slower rate than in the past.

But a small army of land defenders, newly formed and highly dedicated, is promising to turn this tide.

Mangroves being cleared on Antigua's Guiana Island to make way for the construction of a road. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GUIANA ISLAND, Antigua, May 18 2015 (IPS)

In June 2014, Gaston Browne led his Antigua and Barbuda Labour Party to a resounding victory at the polls with a pledge to transform the country into an economic powerhouse in the Caribbean.

In their first 100 days in office, Prime Minister Browne’s Cabinet approved a number of private investment projects valued in excess of three billion dollars."We want to see the prosperity of Antigua and Barbuda but what... are we willing to give up to have a few more jobs?" -- Tahambay Smith

The largest is the Yida Investment Group, Guiana Island Project which will see the development of the largest free trade zone in the country, an off-shore financial centre, a five-star luxury resort, internationally branded villa communities, a casino and gaming complex, a multi-purpose conference centre, a 27-hole golf course, a marina and landing facilities, commercial, retail, sports and other auxillary facilities.

Headquartered in western Beijing, Yida International Investment Group was founded in 2011.

But Yida’s clearing of mangroves on Guiana Island to start the proposed development has raised the ire of local environmentalists who have launched an online petition calling on Prime Minister Browne not to allow the Chinese developers to break laws and to conserve the Marine Protected Areas.

“Climate change is going to change a lot of things that we know and understand about our environment and unless we are mitigating these outcomes it is just wasting time and effort to have something built and then 20 years down the line it would not be viable,” President of the Environment Awareness Group (EAG), Tahambay Smith told IPS.

“Climate change is upon us. What if 10 years from now the development is rendered non-viable because climate change has led to rising sea levels or something?” he said.

“First of all you are talking about a place that is naturally protected because anyone that’s familiar with that area knows that you have a natural reef buffer zone that basically protects us from the raging Atlantic,” he added.

Guiana Island, located off the northeast coast of Antigua between the Parham Peninsula and Crump Island, is the fourth largest island of Antigua and Barbuda. It is a refuge for the Fallow Deer, Antigua’s national animal.

Smith said building a marina in the area would also result in the destruction of reefs and removal of sea grass beds, adding that a few jobs and some investment dollars do no equate to the importance of preserving the environment for future generations.

“Yes we’re all clamouring for jobs and we want to see the prosperity of Antigua and Barbuda but to what detriment and to what extent are we willing to give up to have a few more jobs? The value of mangroves to us as human beings is well documented by scientists. They provide nesting grounds and a breeding ground for fishes, lobsters, crustaceans and many others that aren’t really tied to the Antiguan shores,” Smith said.

“You might have nursing grounds here that affect St. Kitts, St, Maarten, Guadeloupe – the closer islands. It may extend beyond those islands but if you do something here in Antigua and you destroy these things, then that could affect our neighbours. It is not a matter of us just looking about our affairs or just looking for our own interest. It’s a network; these things are interconnected.”

Ruth Spencer, who serves as National Focal Point for the Global Environment Facility (GEF)-Small Grants Programme (SGP) in Antigua and Barbuda, agrees with Smith.

“Our God-given marine ecosystems designed to protect our fragile economies must be protected,” she told IPS.

“How will we adapt to the impacts of climate change if these systems are threatened? The protection of our marine ecosystems is our natural adaptation strategy. Once destroyed, how will be build resilience?”

Eli Fuller is the President of the Antigua Conservation Society (ACS), the group spearheading the petition which outlines that Guiana Island falls within an area protected by the nation’s Fisheries Act and also falls within the North East Marine Management Area (NEMMA), which was designated a Marine Protected Area in 2005.

“There isn’t much on a small island that isn’t related to climate change these days and even more when you are speaking about a massive development all taking place at sea level within an extremely important area designated by law as a Marine Protected Area and zoned as an area for conservation,” Fuller told IPS.

President of the Antigua Conservation Society Eli Fuller says mangrove habitats help to limit the effects of coastal erosion seen more commonly with climate change. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

“Mangrove habitats help limit the effect of coastal erosion seen more commonly with climate change. Additionally, climate change possibly will see stronger storms, longer droughts and more severe floods. Mangrove habitats help filter sediments that run off from dry dusty landcapes whenever there’s a heavy rainfall or flood,” Fuller said.

“Filtering sediment helps save many ecosystems like corals and grassy beds which get damaged when they are covered in silt or sediment. Speaking of marine eco systems, there are so many things that are negatively affecting them because of climate change. Coral bleaching often happens due to effects of climate change and with weakened coral reefs and other marine ecosystems, careful protection is essential,” he added.

But Prime Minister Browne said those who have raised concerns about the mangroves have taken a fundamentalist position.

“I want to make it abundantly clear that individuals, especially small minority groups with their fundamentalist ideals, those cannot take precedence to the overall good of the country,” Browne said.

He added that, “some fauna may have to be destroyed” as government proceeds with various developments.

“My government does not need to be schooled in the protection of the environment,” Browne added.

Fuller maintains that Prime Minister Browne was the man to petition in large numbers so that he could see that it wasn’t a “fundamentalist” minority that was very concerned with this particular development.

“He has to know that people will hold him accountable for breaches in the laws which are there to protect Marine Protected Areas,” he said.

“The ACS sees a situation where our prime minister acknowledges this groundswell of support for sustainable development and more specifically for making sure that developers adhere to environmental protection laws.

“We think he will meet with us and other NGO groups to hear our concerns and to work together with us and hopefully the developers to ensure that the development is guided in accordance with the law and with modern best practices,” Fuller said.

Edited by Kitty Stapp

The Irulas harvest produce from the mangrove forest for a livelihood. Here, an Irula man pulls a crab trap that he had laid out in the morning before heading off to fish in the sea. Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
PICHAVARAM, India, Dec 10 2014 (IPS)

When the Asian tsunami washed over several Indian Ocean Rim countries on Boxing Day 2004, it left a trail of destruction in its wake, including a death toll that touched 230,000.

Millions lost their jobs, food security and traditional livelihoods and many have spent the last decade trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. But for a small tribe in southern India, the tsunami didn’t bring devastation; instead, it brought hope.

Numbering some 25,000 people, the Irulas have long inhabited the Nilgiri Mountains in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and have traditionally earned a living by ridding the farmland of rats and snakes, often supplementing their meagre income by working as daily wage agricultural labourers in the fields.

Now, on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the tsunami, the Irulas in Tamil Nadu are a living example of how sustainable disaster management can alleviate poverty, while simultaneously preserving an ancient way of life.

Prior to 2004, the Irula people laboured under extremely exploitative conditions, earning no more than 3,000 rupees (about 50 dollars) each month. Nutrition levels were poor, and the community suffered from inadequate housing and sanitation facilities.

They were finally included on the government’s List of Scheduled Tribes, largely thanks to the efforts of a government official named G.S. Bedi from the tsunami-ravaged coastal district of Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu.

Inclusion on the list enabled the community to become legal beneficiaries of state-sponsored developmental schemes like the Forest Rights Act and other sustainable fisheries initiatives, thereby improving their access to better housing, and bringing greater food and livelihood security.

More importantly, community members say, the post-tsunami period has marked a kind of revival among Irulas, who are availing themselves of sustainable livelihood schemes to conserve their environment while also increasing their wages.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

In the Indian Sundarbans, impoverished women band together to fight against hunger, economic insecurity and climate change. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
SUNDARBANS, India, Nov 26 2014 (IPS)

November is the cruelest month for landless families in the Indian Sundarbans, the largest single block of tidal mangrove forest in the world lying primarily in the eastern Indian state of West Bengal.

There is little agricultural wage-work to be found, and the village moneylender’s loan remains unpaid, its interest mounting. The paddy harvest is a month away, pushing rice prices to an annual high.

For those like Namita Bera, tasked with procuring 120 kg of rice per month to feed her eight-member family, there is seldom any peace of mind.

“When their very existence is at stake, the island communities are of course adapting in their own ways, but the government of West Bengal needs to do much more." -- Tushar Kanjilal, the 79-year-old pioneer of development in the Sundarbans
That is, until she came together with 12 other women from the poorest households in the Dakshin Shibpur village of the Patharpratima administrative division of West Bengal to insure their families against acute hunger.

Humble women with scant means at their disposal to withstand savage weather changes and national food price fluctuations, they did the only thing that made sense: set up a grain bank under the aegis of their small-savings, self-help group (SHG) known as Mamatamoyi Mahila Dal.

The system is simple: whenever she can afford it, each woman buys 50 kg of low-priced paddy and deposits it into the ‘bank’, explains Chandrani Das of the Development Research Communication and Services Centre (DRCSC), the Kolkata-based non-profit that matches the quantity of grain in a given number of community-based banks.

In this way, “At least one-third of the 75-day lean period becomes manageable,” Shyamali Bera, a 35-year-old mother of three, whose husband works as a potato loader at a warehouse in the state’s capital, Kolkata, told IPS.

For impoverished families, the bank represents significant savings of their meagre income. “Earlier, the only spare cash we had on us was about 10 to 25 rupees (0.16  to 0.40 dollars),” she added. “Now we have about 100 rupees (1.6 dollars). We buy pencils and notebooks for our children to take to school.”

The women’s ingenuity has benefited the men as well. Namita’s husband, a migrant worker employed by a local rice mill, borrowed 10,000 rupees (about 160 dollars) from the SHG last winter and the family reaped good returns from investing in vegetables, seeds and chemical fertilisers.

The scheme is putting village moneylenders out of business. Their five-percent monthly interest rates, amounting to debt-traps of some 60 percent annually, cannot compete with the SHG’s two-percent rates.

But their problems do not end there.

Battling climate change

Designated a World Heritage Site for its unique ecosystem and rich biodiversity, the Sundarbans are highly vulnerable to sea-level rise and intense storms.

Half of the region’s mass of 9,630 square km is intersected by an intricate network of interconnecting waterways, which are vulnerable to flooding during periods of heavy rain.

Roughly 52 of the 102 islands that dot this delta are inhabited, comprising a population of some 4.5 million people. Having lost much of their mangrove cover to deforestation, these coastal-dwelling communities are exposed to the vagaries of the sea and tidal rivers, protected only by 3,500 km of earthen embankments.

Most of the islands lie lower than the 3.5-metre average of surrounding rivers.

Using data from India’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS), the West Bengal government’s latest Human Development Report warns that sea-level rise over the last 70 years has already claimed 220 sq km of forests in the Sundarbans.

Increased frequency and intensity of cyclonic storms due to global warming poses a further, more immediate threat to human lives and livelihood, the report added.

According to the World Wide Fund for Nature-India (WWF), analyses of 120 years’ worth of data show a 26-percent rise in the frequency of high-intensity cyclones.

Nearly 90 percent of people here live in mud and thatched-roof homes. Paddy is the primary crop, grown only during monsoon from mid-June to mid-September.

Forests and fisheries, including harvesting of shrimps, provide the only other source of income, but with a population density of 1,100 persons per square km, compared to the national average of 382 per square km, poverty among island households is twice as high as national rates.

The issue of food security coupled with the damage caused by natural disasters presents itself as an enourmous twin challenge to women here who by and large see to the needs of their families.

Resilient as the forests around them, they, however, are not giving up.

Fuel, fodder, food

At low tide, the river Gobadia flows just 100 metres away from the Ramganga village embankment, where members of the Nibedita self-help group gather to talk to IPS.

Typically, landless agricultural labourers who comprise some 50 percent of the Sundarbans’ population live in villages like this one, totaling no more than 7,500 people, because natural resources are close at hand.

Population density is high here.

The members tell IPS that four fairly severe storms from May to December are the norm now. Rain spells continue for a week instead of the earlier two days.

When 100 km-per-hour winds coincide with the two daily high tides, storm surges are likely to breach embankments, cause saline flash floods, devastate both homes and low farmlands, and leave the area water-logged for up to four months.

“The local village government kept promising that it would stone-face the embankment’s river flank and brick-pave the embankment road, which becomes too slippery [during the rains] to cycle or even walk,” group members told IPS.

When these promises failed to materialize, the women took matters into their own hands. Using money from their communal savings, they leased out part of the land along the embankment and planted 960 trees over 40,000 square feet of the sloping property, hoping this would arrest erosion.

“For the nursery they chose 16 varieties that would provide firewood, fodder to their goats, and trees whose flowers and [fruits] are edible,” said Animesh Bera of the local NGO Indraprastha Srijan Welfare Society (ISWS), which guides this particular SHG.

Nothing is wasted. All the forestry by-products find their way into the community’s skilful hands. The mature trees fetch money in auctions.

Coaxing nutrition from unyielding soil

A 2013 DRCSC baseline survey found that three-quarters of households in Patharpratima block live below the poverty line. Financial indebtedness is widespread. Fragmentation of landholdings through generations has left many families with only homesteads of approximately 0.09 hectares apiece.

Maximizing land is the only option.

In Indraprastha village, women are growing organic food on their tiny 70-square-foot plots, adapting to local soil, water and climate challenges by planting an array of seasonal vegetables, from leafy greens and beans, to tubers and bananas.

These miniature gardens are now ensuring both food and economic security, pulling in a steady income from the sale of organic seeds.

Tomatoes are trained to grow vertically, ginger sprouts from re-used plastic cement bags packed with low-saline soil, while bitter gourds spread outwards on plastic net trellises.

Multi-tier arrangements of plants to maximize sunlight in the garden, the use of cattle and poultry litter as bio-fertilizer, and recycling water are all steps women here take to coax a little nutrition from a land that seems to be increasingly turning away from them.

While NGOs praise the women of the Sundarbans for their ingenuity in the face of extreme hardships, others blame the government of West Bengal for failing to provide for its most vulnerable citizens.

“When their very existence is at stake, the island communities are of course adapting in their own ways, but the government of West Bengal needs to do much more,” Tushar Kanjilal, the 79-year-old pioneer of development in the Sundarbans, told IPS at his Kolkata residence.

“It needs to urgently formulate a comprehensive plan for Sundarbans’ development anchored on a reliable database and make one agency responsible for all development work,” added the head of the non-profit Tagore Society for Rural Development (TSRD).

Until such time as the government takes development into its own hands, self-help groups like those budding all over the Sundarbans – comprising thousands of members – will be the only chance poor communities stand against poverty, hunger, and natural disasters.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

An Irula couple fishes in the creeks of the Pichavaram Mangrove Forest in Tamil Nadu. Credit: Malini Shankar/IPS

By Malini Shankar
PICHAVARAM, India, Nov 13 2014 (IPS)

When the Asian tsunami washed over several Indian Ocean Rim countries on Boxing Day 2004, it left a trail of destruction in its wake, including a death toll that touched 230,000.

Millions lost their jobs, food security and traditional livelihoods and many have spent the last decade trying to pick up the pieces of their lives. But for a small tribe in southern India, the tsunami didn’t bring devastation; instead, it brought hope.

Numbering some 25,000 people, the Irulas have long inhabited the Nilgiri Mountains in the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala, and have traditionally earned a living by ridding the farmland of rats and snakes, often supplementing their meagre income by working as daily wage agricultural labourers in the fields.

“If we were not included in the [Scheduled Tribes] List we would never have benefited from [development] schemes. We would have remained hunter-gatherers, eating rats and hunting snakes." -- Nagamuthu, an Irula tribesman and tsunami survivors
Now, on the eve of the 10-year anniversary of the tsunami, the Irulas in Tamil Nadu are a living example of how sustainable disaster management can alleviate poverty, while simultaneously preserving an ancient way of life.

Prior to 2004, the Irula people laboured under extremely exploitative conditions, earning no more than 3,000 rupees (about 50 dollars) each month. Nutrition levels were poor, and the community suffered from inadequate housing and sanitation facilities.

But when the giant waves receded and NGOs and aid workers flocked to India’s southern coast to rebuild the flattened, sodden landscape, the Irulas received more than just a hand-out.

They were finally included on the government’s List of Scheduled Tribes, largely thanks to the efforts of a government official named G.S. Bedi from the tsunami-ravaged coastal district of Cuddalore in Tamil Nadu.

Inclusion on the list enabled the community to become legal beneficiaries of state-sponsored developmental schemes like the Forest Rights Act and other sustainable fisheries initiatives, thereby improving their access to better housing, and bringing greater food and livelihood security.

More importantly, community members say, the post-tsunami period has marked a kind of revival among Irulas, who are availing themselves of sustainable livelihood schemes to conserve their environment while also increasing their wages.

Bioshields conservation – the way forward for sustainable development

Under the aegis of the M S Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Irulas are now part of a major livelihood scheme that has boosted monthly earnings seven-fold, to roughly 21,000 rupees or about 350 dollars in the Pichavaram Mangrove Forest of Tamil Nadu where their traditional homes are located.

Some 180 Irula families are directly benefitting from training programmes and subsidies granted to their tribal cooperatives, also known as self-help groups.

Members of the tribe are sharpening their skills at fishing, sustainable aquaculture and crab fattening, gradually moving further and further away from a life of veritable servitude to big landowners.

Perhaps most importantly, Irulas are incorporating mangrove protection and conservation into their daily lives, a step they see as necessary to the long-term survival of the entire community.

Indeed, it was the Pichavaram Mangrove Forest, located close to the town of Chidambaram in Tamil Nadu, that spared the community massive loss of life during the tsunami, protecting some 4,500 Irulas, or 900 families, from the full impact of the waves.

Snuggled between the Vellar estuary in the north and Coleroon estuary in the south, the Pichavaram forest spans some 1,100 hectares, its complex root system and inter-tidal ecosystem offering a sturdy barrier against seawater intrusion, waves and flooding.

According to statistics provided by Dr. Sivakumar, a marine biologist with the MSSRF in Chennai, the unlucky few who perished in the tsunami were those who were caught outside of the ecosystem’s protective embrace – some seven people from the Kannagi Nagar and Pillumedu villages, as well as 64 people who were stranded on the MGR Thittu, both located on sandbars devoid of mangroves.

The experience opened many tribal members’ eyes to the inestimable value of mangroves and their own vulnerability to the vagaries of the sea, sparking a grassroots-level conservation effort under the provisions of India’s Forest Rights Act.

“Until we were enlisted in the Scheduled Tribes List we did not know our rights, we were neither successful as hunter-gatherers nor as daily wage agricultural labourers,” says 55-year-old Pichakanna, an Irula tribal man who has happily exchanged agricultural employment for fishing and aquaculture activities that allow him to participate in mangrove conservation efforts in Tamil Nadu.

His salary now comes from prawn farming in the biodiverse mangrove forests, he tells IPS.

Dr. M. S. Swaminathan, chairman of the MSSRF, believes that “by conserving mangrove forests [we are] protecting the most productive coastal ecosystem that guarantees […] livelihood and ecological security.

“Bioshields are an indispensable part of Disaster Risk Resilience,” he adds.

This union between job creation and disaster management has been a stroke of unprecedented good fortune for the Irula people.

Thirty-three-year-old Nagamuthu, an Irula member whose parents – hailing from the Pichavaram forests – survived the tsunami, tells IPS, “If we were not included in the [Scheduled Tribes] List we would never have benefited from [development] schemes. We would have remained hunter-gatherers, eating rats and hunting snakes.

“Now we have developed a mangrove plantation on forest land granted to us by the government, and the Forest Rights Act has also given us fishing rights in the Protected Area of the Pichavaram Mangroves.”

Such developments are crucial at a time when mangroves are disappearing fast. According to a new study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), “mangroves are being destroyed at a rate three to five times greater than the average rates of forest loss.”

By 2050, South Asia could lose as much as 35 percent of its mangroves that existed in 2000. Emissions resulting from such losses make up about a fifth of deforestation-related global carbon emissions, the report says.

Irulas now harvest minor forest produce from the rich waters around the mangroves, such as clusters of natural pearl oysters, which are very high in protein, for their own consumption.

“We have also learnt the skill of crab trapping, and we have installed crab fattening devices close to our homes deep in the mangrove creeks,” Nagamuthu tells IPS. “This has helped us carve out a sustainable livelihood.”

Tribe members have also been taught to dig canals in the eco-friendly ‘fish bone’ pattern that helps bring tidal creeks directly to their doorstep, where they can catch fresh fish for breakfast.

This canal system, now recommended by the Government of India, also helps in decreasing soil salinity, prevents mangrove degradation, and improves fish yields.

This, in turn, has improved livelihood security. Coupled with the acquisition of new and improved equipment – such as nets, boats, oars, engines, hooks and traps – many fisher families have completely turned their lives around.

Residents of villagers such as Killai, Pillumedu, Kannaginagar, Kalaingar, Vadakku, T.S. Pettai, and Pichavaram have now created a community fund that gathers 30 percent of each families’ monthly income; the savings have been used to construct a village temple, a school and drinking water facilities for 900 families from some seven villages.

Pichakanna, who is now the village elder for the newly established MGR Nagar Township, tells IPS proudly that the community fund has also helped establish an ‘early warning helpline’, which uses voice SMS technology to inform fisherfolk about wave height and wind direction, as well as provide six-hourly weather forecasts and early warnings of approaching cyclones.

A voice SMS broadcast aimed at women also passes on information about health and hygiene, maternity benefits and minimum wages.

While heads of states and development experts fly around the world to discuss the post-2015 ‘sustainable development’ agenda, here in Pichavaram, a forgotten tribe is already practicing a new way of life – and they are pointing the way forward to a sustainable future.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Environment ministry park rangers survey one of the channels through the mangroves in the Barra de Santiago wetlands along the coast of the department of Ahuachapán, in western El Salvador. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
BARRA DE SANTIAGO, El Salvador , Nov 5 2014 (IPS)

Carlos Menjívar has been ferrying people in his boat for 20 years in this fishing village in western El Salvador surrounded by ocean, mangroves and wetlands, which is suffering the effects of environmental degradation.

Siltation in the main channel leading to the town has hurt his income, because the buildup of sediment has reduced the depth and sometimes it is so shallow that it is unnavigable.

“This channel used to be deep, but it isn’t anymore,” Menjívar told Tierramérica, standing next to his boat, La Princesa, anchored at the town’s jetty. “On the bottom is all the mud that comes from upstream, from the highlands…sometimes we can’t even work.”

Barra de Santiago, a town of 3,000 located 98 km west of San Salvador, can be reached by dirt road. But some tourists prefer to get there by boat across the estuary, through the lush mangrove forest.“It’s obvious that we can’t keep doing things the same old way…we can’t continue to carry the burden of this degradation of the environment and the impact that we are feeling from climate change.” -- Lina Pohl

Despite the natural beauty of the area, the mangroves run the risk of drying up along some stretches, because the siltation impedes the necessary irrigation with salt water.

In the Barra de Santiago wetlands, which cover an area of 20 sq km, there are many species of animals, a large number of which are endangered, said José Antonio Villedas, the chief park ranger in the area.

The economic effects also hurt the local residents of Barra, “because 99 percent of the men are dedicated to fishing,” he told Tierramérica, although ecological tourism involving the wetlands has been growing over the last two years.

“The loss of depth in the estuary has affected fishing and shellfish harvesting, because we are losing the ecosystem,” said Villedas.

The buildup of sediment in the estuary is one of the environmental problems facing this coastal region, which is linked to the degradation of the ecosystem occurring in the northern part of the department or province of Ahuachapán, where Barra de Santiago is located. Other factors are erosion and the expansion of unsustainable agriculture.

Local organisations and the environment ministry launched a plan aimed at tackling the problem in an integral manner.

The National Programme for the Restoration of Ecosystems and Landscapes (PREP) seeks to restore ecosystems like forests and wetlands and preserve biodiversity, as part of what its promoters describe as “an ambitious national effort to adapt to climate change,” whose impacts are increasingly severe in this small Central American nation of 6.2 million.

One illustration of the changing climate was seen this year. In July, during the rainy season, El Salvador suffered a severe drought, which caused 70 million dollars in losses in agriculture, according to official estimates, mainly in the production of maize and beans, staples of the Salvadoran diet.

But in October the problem was not too little, but too much, water. Moderate but steady rainfall caused flooding and landslides in several regions, which claimed three lives and displaced the people of a number of communities.

Carlos Menjívar, standing next to his boat La Princesa on the Barra de Santiago estuary on El Salvador’s Pacific coast, says the buildup of sediment has made it impossible at times to navigate in the channels because they are too shallow. Credit: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

PREP aims to address the problems by region. It is currently focusing on the Ahuachapán southern micro-region, an area of 592 sq km with a population of 98,000 people.

The area covers four municipalities: San Francisco Menéndez, Guaymango, San Pedro Puxtla and Jujutla, where Barra de Santiago is found.

The approach makes it possible to tackle environmental problems along the coast, while connecting them with what is happening in the north of Ahuachapán.

Much of the pollution in the mangroves comes from the extensive use of agrochemicals on the maize and bean crops in the lower-lying areas and on the coffee plantations in the highlands.

Inadequate use of the soil dedicated to agriculture produces erosion, which washes the chemicals down to the rivers, and thus to the sea.

“Twelve rivers run into the Barra mangroves, and all of that pollution ends up down here with us,” said Villedas.

But the local communities have not stood idly by. For several years now community organisations have been working in the area to raise awareness about the importance of preserving the environment, and are running conservation projects.

Rosa Lobato, director of the Barra de Santiago Women’s Development Association (AMBAS), explained to Tierramérica that they are currently working with an environment ministry programme for the sustainable exploitation of mangroves for wood, which requires that for each tree cut down 200 mangrove seedlings must be planted.

They are also working for the conservation of sea turtles and have set up five blue crab nurseries.

“We are trying to raise awareness of the importance of not harming our natural surroundings,” the community organiser said.

In July, Barra de Santiago became the seventh Ramsar Wetlands of International Importance site in El Salvador and the first coastal site. The designation commits the authorities to step up conservation of the area.

These efforts are combined with measures taken in the nearby El Imposible National Park, one of the most important tropical forests in this Central American country.

El Imposible, which covers 50 sq km, has the highest level of diversity of flora and fauna in El Salvador, according to the Salvanatura ecological foundation. It is home to 500 species of butterflies, 13 species of fish, 19 species of lizards, 244 species of snakes, 279 species of birds and 100 species of mammals, as well as 984 plant species and 400 tree species.

In the middle- to high-lying areas in Ahuachapán small plots of farmland are being developed in pilot projects with a focus on environmentally friendly production, which does not involve the slash-and-burn technique, the traditional method used by small farmers to clear land for planting.

In addition, crop stubble – the stems and leaves left over after the harvest – is being used to prevent soil erosion and keep sediment from being washed towards the coast.

In the highlands, where coffee production is predominant, efforts are also being carried out to get farms to use the smallest possible quantity of agrochemicals and gradually phase them out completely.

“It’s obvious that we can’t keep doing things the same old way…we can’t continue to carry the burden of this degradation of the environment and the impact that we are feeling from climate change,” Lina Pohl, the environment minister, told correspondents who accompanied her on a tour through the area, including Tierramérica.

PREP will last three years and will receive two million dollars in financing from Germany’s agency for international cooperation.

In the micro-region of the southern part of the department of Ahuachapán, which is part of the project, the plan is to restore some 280 sq km of forest and wetlands over the next three years, but the long-term goal is to cover 10,000 sq km.

This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Edited by Estrella Gutiérrez/Translated by Stephanie Wildes

The loss of mangroves affects the poorest among India’s coastal population. These traditional fishermen steer their boat and belongings to safer areas after the 2013 Cyclone Phailin brought heavy floods in it wake. Credit: Manipadma Jena/IPS

By Manipadma Jena
ATHENS, Oct 15 2014 (IPS)

As the cyclonic storm Hudhud ripped through India’s eastern state of Andhra Pradesh, home to two million people, at a land speed of over 190 kilometres per hour on Sunday, it destroyed electricity and telephone infrastructure, damaged the airport, and laid waste to thousands of thatched houses, as well as rice fields, banana plantations and sugarcane crops throughout the state.

It is typhoon season here in Asia.

In Japan, still reeling from the impact of Typhoon Phanfone, Typhoon Vongfong brought another round of torrential rainfall and vicious winds this past weekend, continuing into Monday, and adding to the long list of damages that countries in this part of the world are now calculating.

In India alone, the government has pledged 163 million dollars in disaster relief, but officials say even this tidy sum may not be sufficient to get the state back on its feet. And for the families of the 24 deceased in Andhra Pradesh and and the eastern state of Odissa, no amount of money can compensate for their loss.

"If all the carbon stock held by mangroves were to be released into the atmosphere as CO2, the resulting emissions would be the equivalent of travelling 26 million km by car, 650 times around the world." -- United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)
The ongoing calamity stirs memories of the deadly Typhoon Haiyan that claimed 6,000 lives in the Philippines almost exactly a year ago.

While these tropical storms cannot be stopped in their tracks, there is a natural defense system against their more savage impacts: mangroves. And experts fear their tremendous value is being woefully under-appreciated, to tragic effect, all around the world.

For those currently gathered in Pyeongchang, South Korea, for the 12^th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP 12), this very issue has been a topic of discussion, as delegates assess progress on the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011-2020, and its 20 Aichi Targets, agreed upon at a meeting in Nagoya, Japan, three years ago.

One of the goals accepted by the international community was to improve and restore resilience of ecosystems important for adaptation to and mitigation of climate change. On this front, according to the recently released Global Biodiversity Outlook 4 (GBO-4), efforts have been lacking, with “trends […] moving in the wrong direction”, and the state of marine ecosystems falling “far short of their potential to provide for human needs through a wide variety of services including food provision, recreation, coastal protection and carbon storage.”

Nowhere is this more visible than in the preservation of mangrove forests, with a single hectare storing up to 1,000 tonnes of carbon on average, the highest per unit of area of any land or marine ecosystem, according to the U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP).

Their ability to store vast stocks of CO₂ makes mangroves a crucial component of national and global efforts to combat climate change and protect against climate-induced disasters. Yet, experts say, they are not getting the attention and care they deserve.

A complex ecosystem

Mangroves, a generic term for trees and shrubs of varying heights that thrive in saline coastal sediment habitats, are found in 123 countries and cover 152,000 square kilometers the world over.

Over 100 million people live within 10 km of large mangrove forests, benefiting from a variety of goods and services such as fisheries and forest products, clean water and protection against erosion and extreme weather events.

Mangroves provide ecosystem services worth 33,000 to 57,000 dollars per hectare per year, says a UNEP study entitled ‘The Importance of Mangroves: A Call to Action’ launched recently at the 16^th Global Meeting of the Regional Seas Conventions and Actions Plans (RSCAP) held in Athens from Sep. 29-Oct. 1.

The report found that mangroves “are being destroyed at a rate three to five times greater than the average rates of forest loss”. Emissions resulting from such losses make up approximately a fifth of deforestation-related global carbon emissions, the report added, causing economic losses of between six and 42 billion dollars per year.

Besides human activity, climate change poses a serious threat to these complex ecosystems, with predicted losses of mangrove forests of between 10 and 20 percent by 2100, according to the UNEP.

The situation is particularly grave in South Asia, which by 2050 could lose 35 percent of the mangroves that existed in 2000. In the period running from 2000-2050, ecosystem service losses from the destruction of mangroves will average two billion dollars a year.

With their complex root system acting as a kind of natural wall against storm surges, seawater intrusion, floods and typhoons, mangroves act as a buffer for vulnerable communities, and also guard against excessive damage caused by natural disasters.

This time last year, for instance, Cyclone Phailin – one of the strongest tropical storms ever to make landfall in India – damaged 364,000 houses, affected eight million people and killed 53.

In October 1999, the devastating Odisha Cyclone touched landfall wind speeds of 260 kilometer per hour, and took the lives of no fewer than 8,500 people, while wrecking two million homes and leaving behind damages to the tune of two billion dollars according to official figures.

A mangrove impact study conducted in the aftermath of this storm, the strongest ever recorded in the Indian Ocean, found that the village to incur the lowest loss per household was protected by mangroves.

Scientists have found that mangroves can reduce wave height and energy by 13 to 66 percent, and surges by 50 cm for every kilometre, as they pass through the trees and exposed roots.

Mangroves crucial to regulating global warming

Speaking to IPS on the sidelines of the recently concluded RSCAP meeting, Jacqueline Alder, head of the freshwater and marine ecosystems branch at the UNEP’s Division of Environmental Policy Implementation, explained that a recent cost-benefit analysis in the South Pacific Island state of Fiji found a much higher financial success rate for planting mangroves than building a six-foot-high seawall.

Having worked in countries with high mangrove cover – from India and the Philippines, to Indonesia and Papua New Guinea – Alder believes that “many policy makers are not aware of mangroves’ multiple benefits. They better understand the commercial value of timber from traditional forests, and hence accord it more importance.”

With high costs and low success rates associated with regeneration, mangrove protection is falling short of the Aichi Targets, experts say.

“Regenerating a hectare of mangroves costs a high 7,500 dollars and is a dicey undertaking,” Jagannath Chatterjee of the Regional Centre for Development Cooperation (RCDC), currently working closely with coastal communities to regenerate mangroves in Odisha, one of India’s most cyclone-prone states, told IPS.

He blamed the destruction of the remaining mangrove forests on the “timber mafia”, alleging that cash crops are being planted in mangrove land.

With global warming rising at an alarming rate, the importance of mangroves in climate regulation cannot be ignored much longer.

If all the carbon stock held by mangroves were to be released into the atmosphere as CO₂, the resulting emissions would be the equivalent of travelling 26 million km by car, 650 times around the world, according to calculations by the UNEP.

Edited by Kanya D’Almeida

Geotextile tubes help natural regeneration of mangroves. The biodegradable tube filled with sand and water is used to form a barrier. Spartina grass is then planted in the area. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
GEORGETOWN, May 14 2014 (IPS)

Agriculture has always played an important role in the socioeconomic development of Guyana, one of just two Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states that straddle South America.

Agriculture accounts for more than 20 percent of the country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is food-secure, and agricultural commodities represent more than 40 percent of its export portfolio."I’ve heard people say 'I’m poor and I’m not a scientist and I can’t do anything.' In fact we can do much as small countries, including in the reduction of emissions." -- Dr. Leslie Ramsammy

The 15-member regional bloc has always looked to Guyana, with an estimated 3.3 million hectares of agricultural land, as having a vital role in the Caribbean’s thrust towards food security.

But the chief executive officer of the National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI), Dr. Oudho Homenauth, warns that climate change is robbing Guyana of some of its prime agricultural land.

“We are seeing increasing rainfall, higher tides and so forth,” he told IPS, noting that this has consequences for farmland, particularly along the coast.

“The seawater, as you know, is saline and once saline water gets on the land it is very difficult for that land to recover for crop production because there is nothing we can do in terms of adding any kind of amendment to correct soil salinity.”

Homenauth explained that “the land will have to be left for over a period of time until that salinity is lost” and as the authorities move to protect the agricultural land and also its population, most of whom live along the coasts, Homenauth told IPS that Guyana has come to recognise the importance of mangroves, especially for coastal areas.

He said the country has been on an intensive campaign to protect and restore its coastal mangroves.

Approximately 90 percent of Guyana’s population lives on a narrow coastline strip a half to one metre below sea level. That coastal belt is protected by seawall barriers that have existed since the Dutch occupation of the country.

In recent times, however, severe storms have toppled these defences, resulting in significant flooding, a danger scientists predict may become more frequent.

“Everybody knows Guyana’s seawall, the famous seawall, which is an expensive structure to maintain and to continue to build, particularly as sea level rises,” Agriculture Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy told IPS.

Guyana spends an average of three billion dollars a year to maintain and strengthen sea defences. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

He said that maintaining the seawalls is an enormous cost for Guyana, which has been spending an average of three billion dollars a year to maintain and strengthen the defences.

“But in order to ensure that the seawall and sea dams continue to serve us well and to be less vulnerable to the onslaught of the ocean, we have been protecting and promoting the growth of mangroves and other structures such as geotextile tubes to reduce the impact of the waves coming in,” Ramsammy said.

“We’ve been doing bamboo growth along the seawalls to reduce the impact of the waves coming in. So a number of different structures are being tried but mangroves represent a major response of the Guyana government in supporting the seawall and therefore reducing the impact of water hitting against the wall, against the dams etc.”

Guyana has about 80,000 hectares of mangroves in place right now and over the last three or four years, the country has been “accelerating the growth of mangroves”, many of which were lost 20 to 30 years ago.

“We lost some of our mangroves and we are restoring those mangroves now. But we are also establishing mangrove growth in places that we’ve never been to,” Ramsammy said, noting that “with the water and movement onto the shore, it is very difficult to grow mangroves.”

As a result, Guyana has been conducting research to determine the best technology to use to achieve success.

“You need mangroves to grow to a certain extent before it can withstand the water and so we’ve been trying things like various grasses and so on to hold the soil together and we have been succeeding in these,” Ramsammy told IPS.

Technicians came up with the idea of constructing geotextile tubes to help natural regeneration. A biodegradable tube filled with sand and water is used to form a barrier so that at high tide, muddy water can enter the area and sediment left behind can help build the soil up to a necessary level.

Spartina grass is then planted in the area. The technicians have found that the mangrove seeds would get caught in the grass and would later germinate.

When it comes to climate change and global warming, Ramsammy believes Guyanese should take pride that they are perhaps the most aware country in the world.

“I can’t say that our people know all the details, all the science, but that’s not the point. If we could also make them aware of the science that’s okay but they are very aware of climate change as a phenomenon; they are very aware of what climate change can do to us and therefore they are becoming part of the climate change revolution,” he told IPS.

“We have vast room for improvement in Guyana and the Caribbean but I think that Guyana would rank as one of those countries where people are very much aware. Are they doing what is necessary? I think they lag in terms of their knowledge and what they do, but if you don’t create the knowledge, actions will not follow.”

Ramsammy noted that no country is too small to do something about climate change. In fact, he said there are things that every citizen in the world can do.

“I’ve heard people say ‘I’m poor and I’m not a scientist and I can’t do anything.’ In fact we can do much as small countries, including in the reduction of emissions,” he said.

“We have in Antigua or even Guyana hotels etc. If these hotels were to switch [from] the use of fossil fuel to the use of bio-digesters, using the waste to create energy, we can make a big difference in emissions and maybe in the global environment. It is a needle in the sand but at least it creates an avenue for every citizen to play a role and I think we should adopt that kind of approach that all of us as citizens could do something,” Ramsammy added.

Spartina grass in the foreground, with geotextile tubes in the distance, that help mangrove trees regenerate naturally. Credit: Desmond Brown/IPS

By Desmond Brown
VICTORIA, Guyana, Oct 26 2013 (IPS)

Theola Fortune can recall how residents of Victoria would ridicule her and others every time they went into the east coast village to warn residents about the importance of mangroves and the need to protect them.

“They would accuse us of breeding mosquitoes in the community,” Fortune said. Yet scientists say that mangrove trees, which grow mainly in tropical and subtropical regions, can shield cities and towns from rising seas and storm surges by creating a natural barrier where the ocean meets the land.

Approximately 90 percent of Guyana’s population lives on a narrow coastline strip a half to one metre below sea level. That coastal belt is protected by seawall barriers that have existed since the Dutch occupation of the country. In recent times, however, severe storms have toppled these defences, resulting in significant flooding, a danger scientists predict may become more frequent.

After huge waves breached the seawalls on more than one occasion this year alone, Fortune said, “residents are finally beginning to realise that mangroves could help to protect their community” from destruction, in addition to saving lives."Residents are finally beginning to realise that mangroves could help to protect their community."
-- Theola Fortune

Fortune, Avnel Wood and Kene Moseley are among the women who, as part of the Guyana Mangrove Restoration Project (GMRP), are combining commercial activity with spreading the word on the importance of protecting coastal mangroves.

“We sell tamarind balls, honey, coconut biscuits, sugar cane juice and other products,” Wood told IPS, adding that with the project, “many single mothers in the community are now able to provide for their families.”

Wood does not doubt what is causing the unusually high waves and frequent topping of the seawalls. “This is a product of climate change,” she told IPS. “There is nothing in that [coastal] area to break the energy of the waves because there are no mangroves at that part of the seawall.”

Scientists say that mangroves also play an important role in combating climate change because they store ten times more carbon than any other tree in Guyana’s forests.

Education and economic empowerment

In 2011 the GMRP, which is funded by a partnership between the European Union and government of Guyana, established the Mangrove Reserve Women’s Producers Group to promote alternative livelihoods in communities along the coast.

“The European Union recognises the immense value of mangroves and protecting mangroves, contributing to our sea defence,” Annette Arjoon Martins, chairman of the Guyana Mangrove Action Committee, told IPS.

Guyana showed its commitment as well, she said, by making available 100 million Guayana dollars in 2010, a move which “in itself was a good demonstration that…we are not going to wait until the EU funds are released.”

Fortune told IPS that her mother is among a group of about 35 women who are now beekeepers, thanks to the project. They can sell honey from the bees for 100 Guyana dollars (50 U.S. cents) an ounce.

The beekeepers build their hives in the black mangrove forest, Wood said. “The mangroves have a lot of flowers, and so they get a lot of honey at a faster rate.”

The GMRP also provides climate change and mangrove education to local children and youth, while visitors from other parts of the country and from outside Guyana are taken on horse-drawn carts for educational tours.

Restoration efforts

In 2011, only 22,632 hectares of mangroves remained in Guyana. Since then, more than a half million mangrove seedlings have been planted throughout the country as efforts intensify to protect the Guyana shoreline from coastal degradation.

Still, more work needs to be done, Leslie Ramsammy, Guyana’s agriculture minister, told IPS. “We have to do a much better job in educating our people about the mangrove,” he said.

“While some of us seem to now know that mangroves are an important part of our defence against an encroaching sea, against rising sea water, not every citizen sees mangroves as a good thing or as a necessary thing.”

For those who did and do consider mangroves important, it has taken several attempt to figure out how to help protect them.

Initially, “we did mangrove planting in the area, but because the elevation of the mud was not up to the required level, erosion took place. All of the mangrove trees we planted were destroyed,” Wood told IPS.

So the technicians went back to the drawing board and came up with the idea of constructing geotextile tubes to help natural regeneration. A biodegradable tube filled with sand and water is used to form a barrier so that at high tide, muddy water can enter the area and sediment left behind can help build the soil up to a necessary level.

“Spartina grass is then planted in the area,” Wood explained. “We have found that the mangrove seeds would get caught in the grass and would later germinate.” Because of the tubes and the grass, she said, “in this area, we are fortunate to have regeneration” of the mangroves.

Dead mangroves in Jutía Key, in Cuba’s Pinar del Río province. Credit: Jorge Luis Baños/IPS

By Ivet González
SURGIDERO DE BATABANÓ, Cuba, Oct 22 2013 (IPS)

In the 1960s, the Cuban government declared that storage of fresh water for times of drought or hurricanes was a matter of national security, and it began to dam up the country’s rivers. But that policy has claimed an unforeseen victim: mangroves.

The sea swallowed up the old road connecting Batabanó and Mayabeque beaches, in southwest Cuba. In the last 50 years, more than 100 metres of coastline have been lost in that area to the south of Havana. The weakened mangroves, which now receive hardly any fresh water, were unable to prevent it from happening.

“The mangroves deteriorated so much that in 2008, Hurricane Ike pushed the sea a metre and a half inland, and it never went back out. Since then, it has continued to advance inland,” Flora Yau, who lives in Surgidero de Batabanó, told IPS.

People in this town in the municipality of Batabanó in the province of Mayabeque, some 70 km south of Havana, are tired of the flooding that now happens every time strong winds blow from the south.

The worst thing is the loss of land to erosion. In some places, nearly two metres a year of coastline have been lost, and some areas are completely submerged now, like Bujamey Point.

The mangroves have been weakened, first and foremost, by the fact that they are not getting as much fresh water as they used to, because of the dams built inland, biologist Leda Menéndez said. “The dams cut the natural circulation of the water.”

Mangroves, which make up 20 percent of the forests in this Caribbean island nation and cover 4.8 percent of the territory, need a constant flow of a mixture of fresh and saltwater, the researcher explained.

Most rivers in Cuba have been dammed. There are a total of 969 reservoirs, according to the National Institute of Water Resources.

This vast amount of fresh water stored up is due to a policy dating back to the 1960s, when the government decided it was necessary to confront droughts and hurricanes.

“In some places, if we want the mangroves to thrive, we’ll have to give them a little water from the reservoirs,” said Menéndez.

She said that was an indispensable measure for strengthening coastal forests, which act as barriers that protect life inland from natural disasters and other meteorological phenomena that are getting worse due to climate change, according to the scientific community.

Besides the lack of fresh water, mangroves are under threat from the construction of channels and dikes, soil sealing, industrial pollution, and deforestation.

Four species of mangroves – red (Rhizophora mangle), black (Avicennia germinans), white (Laguncularia racemosa) and button (Conocarpus erectus) – have traditionally been used in Cuba to produce charcoal, railroad ties and tannin for curing leather.

Mangroves play an essential role in all tropical areas of the Americas. The 11 species in the region are also threatened by tourism and the shrimp industry.

Cuba‘s agriculture ministry prohibited the exploitation of mangroves in December 2012, as a measure aimed at adaptation to global warming.

“Climate change has triggered an interest in preserving the mangroves,” said Menéndez. “Human beings need them to protect places where people live and economic activities take place,” at times of rising sea levels and salinity, and when extreme weather events occur.

In a warming planet, the environmental services provided by the mangroves are becoming more and more crucial: they curb erosion of shorelines, provide breeding grounds for fish and other marine life, prevent saltwater intrusion into farmland and water sources, prevent flooding and preserve biodiversity.

“If we cut the mangroves down, the sea advances with greater intensity,” geography teacher Miguel Díaz explains to his students in Batabanó.

Teachers in the area, where communities like Surgidero de Batabanó are suffering the consequences, now educate their students about the problems facing the mangroves.

Besides the loss of land, the soil on farmland near the coast is becoming more and more saline, and flooding is becoming routine.

“When we go out to clean up garbage, we see that they steal sand for construction and cut down the trees, and other things are damaged too,” said Roxana Vitres, one of the 32 students from the Bac-Ly de Surgidero school involved in a programme in which students are taught about environmental issues.

“We carry out inspections and alert the authorities,” said 15-year-old Daniel Cruz.

The children and teenagers learn about ecology while cleaning up and monitoring parts of the coast, as part of the SOS Mangroves programme led by the Batabanó History Museum, the local partner of the non-governmental organisation Pronaturaleza and education authorities.

Efraín Arrazcaeta, the coordinator of SOS Mangroves and a Pronaturaleza activist, told IPS that “we need a strong corps of forest rangers to reduce incidents [of destruction] and keep the Southern Dike overflow channels clean.”

The dike, which began to be built in the 1980s, caused the death of the biggest and most productive forests along the coastline starting 130 km south of Havana – an area that includes Surgidero – according to a study by the state Institute of Ecology and Systematics.

A large part of the mangroves in that area have been protected since last year because they form part of the South Batabanó Wildlife Refuge Area.

But violations continue to be reported, because Cuba’s environmental oversight systems are weak and fines are small.

On the water in the San Crisanto mangroves. Credit: Emilio Godoy/IPS

By Emilio Godoy
SINANCHÉ, Mexico, Mar 6 2013 (IPS)

The residents of San Crisanto, a small communal village nestled in an idyllic setting in the southeastern Mexican state of Yucatán, have learned that valuing and protecting natural resources can generate employment and income.

The San Crisanto initiative, which combines ecotourism and other economic activities, is a model for other communities located along Mexico’s Caribbean coast, which is rich in biodiversity but exposed to unpredictable weather hazards.

Visitors to San Crisanto can take boat tours, swim in the crystal-clear waters of “cenotes” or sinkholes, stay in environmentally friendly “eco-cabins”, and purchase locally produced crafts and sweets made from coconuts. In 2012, the community received 12,000 visitors, although it has the capacity for 50,000 annually, according to the residents.

In addition, “we work a great deal on education. The majority of the people are very much aware of the importance of taking care of the natural resources. We must take care of them because of climate change, to protect them from hurricanes,” said Reyes Cetz, 44, one of the 35 registered landholders in the “ejido” or communal village of San Crisanto.

There is as yet no incontrovertible scientific proof that the extremely powerful and destructive hurricanes of recent years are caused by climate change. But it is highly probable that atmospheric warming has had an impact on the intensity and frequency of extreme weather events.

In 1995, Hurricanes Opal and Roxanne devastated the mangrove forests of San Crisanto, located 1,400 kilometres southeast of Mexico City. First the residents organised to repair the damages. Then they proceeded to strengthen the ecosystem against future threats by clearing channels through the mangrove, to allow water to flow through freely.

“The mangrove forests recovered quickly, because the water currents carried nutrients to them. The more mangrove forests there are, the more birds, fish and crocodiles there are,” said José Loria, 56, the operations manager of the ejido, which created the San Crisanto Foundation in 2001.

The ejido system dates back to the Aztecs, and was re-established in Mexico in the 1930s. It is based on the communal tenure and farming of public lands. The San Crisanto ejido was established by a group of farmers who requested land from the state government for growing coconuts in 1957, although its creation was not authorised until 1973.

The community jointly holds 850 hectares of mangrove forests and 100 hectares of coconut groves. In addition to ecotourism, they use these communal resources for agriculture, craft production and salt extraction.

Today they earn a living from “selling scenery,” Loria told Tierramérica. “We have created a company to make use of the resources. We aren’t fighting poverty here, we are improving the quality of life.”

The average income of each “ejidatorio” or communal landholder is 6,000 dollars a year, earned from ecotourism, salt extraction, and payments for environmental services like reforestation and protection of the mangrove forests. These various activities provide employment for 300 people.

“During these months – between February and May – we concentrate on extracting salt and preparing for the tourist season,” Cetz told Tierramérica. This year they have already produced 250 tons of salt, which the ejido sells for 39 dollars a ton.

Since 2001, the community has restored 11,300 metres of canals in the mangrove forests and 45 cenotes fed by underground water sources. While these efforts have reduced the risk of flooding, they have also led to growth in the populations of endemic species.

The area around San Crisanto, home to 570 habitants, is exposed to hurricanes and storm surges caused by an increase in sea level, which means there is an urgent need here to adapt to weather variations.

But the state of Yucatán, highly vulnerable to these problems and extensively studied by scientists, has still not developed a plan to confront climate change.

Mexico loses 10,000 hectares of mangrove forests of year. There are currently more than 770,000 hectares of these coastal ecosystems remaining in the country, according to the National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (CONABIO).

If the current rate of destruction continues, by 2025 Yucatán will have lost almost 30 percent of the mangrove forests it had in 2010, according to projections by the National Institute of Ecology and Climate Change.

Mangrove forests, made up of numerous tree species adapted to swampy, saline soils, provide a habitat for a wide range of fauna, serve as a natural water filter, and protect coastal areas from storm surges, hurricanes and erosion. As they grow, the trees absorb large volumes of carbon dioxide.

Their destruction in Yucatán is largely the result of urbanisation and the expansion of tourism, particularly the hotel industry. Other threats include pollutants from fertilisers, pesticides and wastewater that are washed into the mangroves by rivers and streams.

In this region “there are two fundamental elements” that need to be protected: the coastal barriers provided by coral reefs and mangrove forests, said Lorenzo Rosenzweig, executive director of the non-governmental Mexican Fund for Nature Conservation.

“The best way to protect the coasts is to protect the mangroves,” he told Tierramérica.

The Mexican NGO participated in the creation of the Mesoamerican Reef Fund, established in 2004 to protect the coral reefs off the coasts of Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras, and between 2009 and 2012 it designed adaptation programmes for four ecosystem areas in southeast Mexico, including the Caribbean coast.

The success of San Crisanto’s efforts has attracted national and international attention. In 2010, the United Nations Development Programme awarded the community its biennial Equator Prize, and the following year, it received a national prize for forest conservation.

The community has also been the subject of a study, “Campesinos-pescadores de Yucatán: uso de la biodiversidad y apropiación de recursos naturales costeros” (Peasant farmers-fishers of Yucatán: Use of biodiversity and appropriation of coastal natural resources), published in 2010 by Luis Arias and Salvador Montiel of the Centre for Research and Advanced Studies at the National Polytechnic Institute.

The study identified 144 species used for livelihood purposes in San Crisanto and noted that ecotourism has become the leading economic activity, due to both the revenues it brings in and the “social recognition” that it earns the community.

The ejido’s strategic plan for 2009-2029 foresees an increase in this trend. “We see ourselves as a community that lives from tourism,” said Loria. “We need to diversify and improve our offerings, to reach a bigger market,” he added.

However, he warned, “if the mangrove disappears, it will be good-bye, San Crisanto.”

* This story was originally published by Latin American newspapers that are part of the Tierramérica network.

Mohammad Jamal Hossain shows off vegetables grown on his “dike” garden. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

By Naimul Haq
BARGUNA, Bangladesh , Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

Scientists predict that in the coming years, Bangladesh will be battered by even more climate disasters than it has already endured. Global warming has caused devastating damage in this lower Himalayan delta country of 150 million people, where seawater intrusion, increasingly intense cyclones, dried up rivers and extreme weather events have become the norm.

Crop production is said to have declined by 30 percent and if seawater inundation continues at its current rate, 16 percent of the country’s coastal areas will be underwater by 2050.

It is also estimated that by 2050 some 18.5 million inhabitants of coastal Bangladesh will face hunger, homelessness and poverty as a result of climate change.

Despite the urgent need to reduce carbon emissions, widely recognised as the leading cause of global warming, industrialised nations have been unmoved.

As the recent United Nations climate summit in Doha, Qatar, made clear, appeals and tragedies have not been sufficient to prompt binding agreements on emissions cuts.

But faced with the threat of a massive humanitarian and ecological crisis in the coming decades, the government of Bangladesh is no longer willing to remain silent.

Since 2009 it has poured 350 million dollars into projects to address climate change, including devising better adaptation and mitigation models.

Community-based adaptation to climate change through coastal afforestation is one such model that has attracted global attention for its unique approach to adaptation and sustainability and is now being practiced in Bangladesh.

What started off as a pilot project in 2009 has now provided some 80 landless families in the coastal Sonatola village in the southwestern Barguna district with state-owned fallow land on which to cultivate fruit and vegetables, grow timber trees and rear fish.

Located about 480 kilometres from the capital Dhaka, this district was chosen for its past experiences of being hit by both Aila and Sidr, two of this century’s deadliest cyclones.

A mangrove forest planted along the seashore to protect coastal communities from flooding, cyclones and storms. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

Along with growing fruits and cultivating fish for livelihood purposes, the project also included planting wild mangrove forests, locally known as golpata and kewra, to protect the coastal communities from cyclones.

The government also erected an embankment along the coastline to prevent seawater intrusion and shelter inhabitants from storms, surges and wind.

Each of the beneficiaries received about 23 decimals of land (about 1o,000 square feet) for the purpose of excavating a deep ditch and constructing a dike alongside it to confine the water.

Locals call it the ‘ditch and dike project’, though its official name is ‘Forest, Fruit, Fish’ or the ‘Triple F’ model.

Peasants planted fruit and timber trees along the embankment and released fish, including several carp varieties, into the ditches that lie parallel to each other.

Benefits to the community

The Triple F model has been a godsend for the once impoverished community.

The soil in Naltola, an area comprising a cluster of small villages from which many of the project’s beneficiaries hailed, had become too salty for growing crops, with soil quality worsening at an alarming pace, according to numerous scientists.

Local coastal farmers told IPS that, until the project began, their main source of livelihood had been disappearing fast, as they had been forced to give up growing crops.

Beneficiaries of the “dike and ditch” project hold up their fish catch. Credit: Naimul Haq/IPS

“Local fish stocks were also depleting due to high salinity. So the ‘ditch and dike project’ has really come to our rescue,” Shajahan Mallik, a 53-year-old former fisherman, who heads a committee of the new landowners, told IPS.

Twenty-three-year-old Mohammad Jamal Hossain, another of the project’s beneficiaries, told IPS he recently earned about 125 dollars selling four types of carp species in Naltola bazaar, a small fishing and farming village just four kilometres from the Bay of Bengal.

“I had virtually no income before this project but now I earn a regular income selling vegetables like cabbage, gourd, peas, beans, spinach and radish. Fish is in high demand here, and the big varieties I catch fetch good prices,” said Jamal, who lives with his mother and sisters.

Jamal’s neighbours made similar fortunes growing vegetables and cultivating fish. The fruit trees are not yet matured so the beneficiaries may have to wait another two years before they can start selling fruits.

Masuda Begum (33), one of the poorest women in the village, said, “I earned about 150 dollars last summer from the sale of fish and vegetables.”

Masuda’s neighbour Rahima (35) told IPS, “When I need to buy something I don’t have to worry about cash. I ask my son to catch fish and trade them for necessary commodities in the market.”

In fact, many of the families have stopped shopping for daily essentials except for some spices and rice, since fresh vegetables and fish are now plentiful. The trees also provide enough dry leaves and twigs for fires.

Some families have even bought ducks and released them into the fresh water ditches, hoping that the birds’ eggs bring even more profitability. This innovation bodes well for the project’s sustainability.

Observing the project’s success from afar, thousands of landless farmers in the surrounding villages have appealed for similar allocations of land on which to cultivate sustainable livelihoods.

“We are preparing a proposal for expanding the programme,” Mohammad Abdul Wahhab Bhuiyan, deputy commissioner of the Barguna district, told IPS, adding that the only way to cope with the enourmous number of requests is to replicate the project in the most vulnerable communities across Bangladesh.

Aparup Chowdhury, additional secretary of the ministry of environment and forests, told IPS, “The project has already received international recognition thanks to our State Minister for Environment and Forests, Dr. Hasan Mahmud, who has been an enthusiastic supporter all the way through.”

“We are now planning to take the lessons from Barguna to other coastal districts like Noakhali, Cox’s Bazar, Bagerhat, Bhola and Khulna, which would greatly help thousands of farmers there,” Chowdhury added.

This past April, the Triple F model received the renowned international ‘Earth Care’ award in recognition of its mitigation and adaptation efforts.

(END)

As sea erosion worsens, coastal residents in Nhon Hai commune in Binh Dinh province use rocks and sandbags to protect their homes. Credit: Thuy Binh/IPS

By Thuy Binh
AN BIEN, Vietnam, Nov 25 2012 (IPS)

For the last decade, many families in this southwestern Vietnamese province have been uprooted at least once every two years – but this is not due to economic or political upheaval.

Rather, extreme weather has forcibly turned many of these coast-dwellers into unwilling travellers, as raging storms and a rising sea level lead to continued loss of land – and home.

“Each year, sea waves have eroded about three to four metres of land,” says a 47- year-old fisher from the Tay Yen commune. “Our family had to move five times, (and) now our house is four metres from the sea.”

But this is obviously not far enough. Already, the floors of the house are wet with seawater and a tree standing in what was once the fisherman’s front yard has now become the marker for his casting point.

The fisherman, who has lived in this commune for the last 20 years, says he would have pulled up stakes and moved on once more if only he had money.

He finds no comfort in the fact that throughout Vietnam’s many other coastal communities, and even in the Mekong Delta, thousands of others are suffering the same plight.

Vietnam has long been subject to typhoons that would typically lash the central coast and the Mekong River Delta. But in the last several years those typhoons have become even more intense and, accompanied by a rising sea level, have put coastal areas and communities in the Mekong Delta at great risk.

Indeed, a December 2010 World Bank report said that Vietnam is experiencing longer typhoon and flood seasons while “storms are tracking into new coastal areas”.

It also noted that Vietnam “may be one of the top five countries in the world likely to be most affected by sea level rise”, adding that records already show a sea level increase of about three millimeters annually from 1993 to 2008.

The report lists coastal erosion among the effects of these changes, with some areas already experiencing erosion of about five to 10 metres a year, while others are suffering erosion of as much as one kilometre annually. Increased salinity of coastal aquifers and inundation can also be expected from significant sea level rise, it warned.

Already, says Tran Van Giang, vice chairman of Tay Yen commune, “Five out of six hamlets in the commune are directly affected by sea water.”

Many areas in Kien Giang, located about 250 kilometres from Ho Chi Min City, are actually experiencing erosion of 25 metres a year, and experts estimate that as much as one-third of Kien Giang’s coast has been lost to landslides.

That erosion has destroyed vast swathes of this southwestern province’s famed mangrove forests, leading one provincial environmental official to lament, “Forest belts have been lost.”

Officials from Binh Dinh province in south-central Vietnam are equally worried about continuing erosion there.

“Every year, at least two to three rows of houses were washed away (about 80 to 90 houses),” says Do Van Sang, director of the province’s Centre for Land Development, which oversees reallocation and resettlement for households in the high-risk and affected areas in Binh Dinh.

“Local resistance efforts and local people could not keep up.”

Meanwhile, Pham Van Hung, chairman of the people’s committee of one of the coastal communes in Bin Dinh, points to increasingly vicious storms as the primary cause of property damage or outright loss.

“Since 2000,” he says, “the area has been affected by the strong tides. Storms in 1998 and 2001 totally demolished 52 houses.”

Other experts have cited the decimation of mangrove forests as a reason for increased damages.

Le Thi Huong, who has lived near the Mai Huong estuary in Kien Giang for three decades now, says that in the past, the mangrove forest in front of her house was as far as three kilometres from the coast. But now she estimates that the sea is just a few hundred metres away from the forest – or what’s left of it, anyway.

Most of the forest’s big trees are already gone. “Now, because of erosion, more trees are falling and dying,” says Huong.

Still, some see hope in mangrove-restoration projects, including one that is currently being rolled out in Kien Giang.

At Vam Ray hamlet in Kien Giang’s Hon Dat District, a 400-metre mangrove forest, part of a pilot programme by the German Society for International Cooperation (GIZ), has been thriving.

Mangrove forests have long been seen as an effective method of erosion-reduction. GIZ says that a mangrove forest “can reduce wave energy from 50 to 67 percent”.

The GIZ project is not the first of its kind in Kien Giang. The national government has been implementing mangrove reforestation projects here for the last 10 years. Its success rate, however, has been a discouraging 50 percent.

To ensure better results for its project, GIZ decided to concentrate on controlling two factors: waves and sludge. Nguyen Huu Hoa, head of agriculture and rural development in Kien Giang’s An Bien district, believes that the GIZ project could be replicated and “the local people can do it by themselves”.

But this approach has elicited a fair amount of debate.

Some experts have said the GIZ project may be difficult to replicate because of the costs, which, according to Kien Giang Science and Technology Department Deputy Director Phung Van Thanh, “are higher than the permitted state cost level”.

He also worries that it may not be applicable in areas with serious erosion in the province, pointing out that the GIZ site experiences just 10-metre erosion annually, not even half as extreme as the levels in many areas in Kien Giang.

Dr. Le An Tuan of the Research Institute for Climate Change at Can Tho University worries about the long-term impact of such projects. The GIZ’s narrow four-hectare mangrove forests have low resistance to the more intense storms these days, he says.

Additionally, the project could give a false sense of security to residents living in the mangrove project area – such as the 300,000 living within the parameters of GIZ Kien Giang project – and draw more settlers into a vulnerable location.

*This story, also published as a set of stories on the Hanoi Radio and Television online site, was produced as part of IPS Asia-Pacific’s ‘Climate Change: A Reporting Lens from Asia’ series.

Lucena Duman readies for her tour-guide role on Ang Pulo island. Credit: Marwaan Macan-Markar/IPS.

By Marwaan Macan-Markar
ANG PULO, Philippines, Jun 15 2012 (IPS)

On a humid islet covered with mangroves, Lucena Duman and her neighbours have found a route out of poverty. They work as conservationists and tour guides in this isolated corner of the Philippines.

After feeding her goats, which were once her only source of income, the 46-year-old Duman dons a wide-brimmed sun hat, slips into a yellow guides T-shirt and heads out on her bamboo raft. She is going from her village of small-scale fishers and farmers to Ang Pulo island in the South China Sea.

Her work on the 7.5 hectare islet has brought a new appreciation of mangroves. “All I knew of mangroves before was that they were a source of firewood and food – snails,” she admitted during a break from guiding visitors to plant mangrove seedlings. “But after being trained, we realise it is a richer place for us if we protect mangroves.”

The sea change since late 2009 is not limited to the Philippines. Similar accounts are heard across Southeast Asia as regional and international organisations promoting biodiversity encourage local communities to become foot soldiers to defend what is left of some 63,000 sq km of mangrove forests.

“This is a phenomenon spreading across the forestry eco-system in Southeast Asia and the rest of the continent,” says Simmathiri Appanah, forestry officer at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Asia and Pacific office in Bangkok. “Communities living close to forests are being drawn to manage and preserve them, and what is happening with mangroves reflects this.”

The new formula offers communities an economic incentive to protect mangroves and, at times, the special rights as co-owners of mangroves. “It is better than policies that prevailed before, where government agencies played a dominant role in managing mangroves, ignoring the people who lived nearby,” Appanah tells IPS.

All ten countries that belong to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), a regional bloc, have programmes to protect these salt-tolerant trees and shrubs with their thick roots. Local communities, school children and even the private sector have been drawn to this effort.

In Indonesia, the largest country in the region and home to 62 percent of mangrove cover in ASEAN, college students rallying under the banner Green Community are involved in managing the coastal ecosystems near their schools, according to the ASEAN Centre for Biodiversity (ACB), an intergovernmental body promoting conservation in the regional bloc. “They plant mangroves with a number of partners.”

In Malaysia, a mangrove conservation project supported by a private bank has “resulted in an alternative source of income for the communities through the establishment of mangrove nurseries,” adds the ACB. In neighbouring Singapore “children (are being taught) how to appreciate its mangrove ecosystem.”

“The territory occupied by the Philippines and the rest of the ASEAN member states houses a third of the world’s mangroves, coral reefs and seagrass areas,” says Rodrigo Fuentes, executive director of ACB, based in the Philippines city Los Banos. “These ecosystems support the highest concentration of coastal and marine fauna and flora in the planet.”

Consequently, the economic value of mangroves needs to be seen in a different light as offering a “stream of ecosystem services” that matter to the fishing and tourism sectors, he explains in an interview. “This paradigm shift is happening now, putting a full value to mangroves to benefit an estimated 600 million people in the ASEAN region who depend on these resources for food and income.”

But there are other benefits, too. Mangroves serve as an important buffer for coastal communities hit by storms that churn up tidal surges, and as a frontline defence of expected sea level rises due to global warming.

Research in Malaysia offers another feature about mangroves helping the planet combat climate change – a high capacity for sequestering carbon. “They represent a potentially vast carbon sink, absorbing and storing excess carbon from the atmosphere,” states Dicky Simorangkir, international advisor to a biodiversity project run by the German international development agency (GIZ). “They are able to sequester some 1.5 tonnes of carbon per hectare per year.”

Yet, such growing appreciation for mangroves is not universal, Simorangkir admits. He points to the steady loss of mangroves for firewood, to produce charcoal, and wood chips and timber for sale. Mangroves are also felled in large swathes to make way for shrimp farms. “About 150,000 hectares of mangroves are lost a year around the globe.”

And so the Ang Pulo mangrove conservation park matters in Southeast Asia, which has seen its coastlines lose some 600 sq km of mangroves annually for the last 20 years. “Only one percent of mangroves are protected globally, like the Ang Pulo reserve,” says Simorangkir.

For Duman, it means guiding those who visit the islet, from university students to Filipinos driving from Manila for a weekend holiday, to discover the signs of a mangrove on the mend after trunks were slashed years ago. “There are more crabs and shrimp and over 20 different types of birds now,” she says. “These mangroves are our future.”