Mangroves: Our Ocean Forests
World Ocean Day 2023
Mangroves are incredible for so many reasons, stemming from their ability to grow and thrive on the boundary of ocean and land. The trees’ unique adaptations to salinity make wherever they grow a vital haven for wildlife and an important resource for the hundreds of millions of people living near these ecosystems. Their importance to people and wildlife could not be any more clear this World Ocean Day as ever-growing impacts of climate change and biodiversity loss threaten our planet.
The United Nations theme for World Ocean Day this year is “Planet Ocean: Tides are Changing”. The Global Mangrove Alliance could not agree more with this theme; we have to prioritize ocean issues and change the tide on loss. To accomplish that, our Alliance is working on a greater scale than ever before, supporting the Mangrove Breakthrough (see below), building out National Chapters, and looking for collaboration opportunities across sectors. The Global Mangrove Watch, the evidence base informing our Alliance, was recently the key source of data for a UNEP report on mangroves and experts around the world are working on new tools to advance our understanding of these trees and improve their management and restoration into our uncertain future. Continue reading our complete newsletter for more about the initiatives underway to protect and restore mangroves across our membership.
Spotlight: Learn more about the Mangrove Breakthrough
The Mangrove Breakthrough is a community of action dedicated to sustainably managing and increasing mangrove cover by 2030 by catalyzing a USD 4 billion shared global goal. The Breakthrough is currently convened by the Global Mangrove Alliance and the UN Race to Resilience Climate Champions and coordinated by Systemiq.
The Community of Action follows nine guiding principles and consists of civil society organizations, governments, and the private sector, all of whom implement action and projects to advance the Breakthrough. To align ambition, these endorsers commit to bold but achievable contributions toward shared science-based and measurable goals. By joining together we can accelerate to the pace needed to reach critical biodiversity and climate targets globally and avoid fragmentation. We can jointly ensure successful interventions that build on the best available science, best practices and lessons learnt, preventing common exacerbations to an already low survival rate by failure to reinstate functionality and connectivity of these vibrant ecosystems. Read more.
For more information on the work being done by our members, read our full newsletter, available here.
