The State of the World’s Mangroves 2026
From Ambition to Action
Authored by Mark Spalding, Co-author of the State of the World's Mangroves
A couple of years ago I had the great good fortune to be taken out on a test run for a community-led mangrove tour in Cartagena, Colombia. It had a somewhat inauspicious beginning. We got into a rather small canoe, powered by delightful, friendly men brandishing home-made paddles, but I felt a bit sad. We were in a filthy channel, scarred by plastic waste and threatened by the ongoing illegal land reclamation we’d just left behind. It was difficult to imagine their ecotourism taking off.
Then we rounded a corner to a view I will never forget. Hundreds of pink flamingos filled a wide lagoon. Spoonbills, herons, storks, ibis, terns, ducks and many waders roosted, waded and swam. It was still early morning, and remarkably quiet – across the still water a thick line of mangroves marked the margins with a line of skyscrapers far behind them, but reaching their reflections over the water towards me.
The State of the World's Mangroves 2026 Report
Right now, the world feels like it’s in a bit of a mess and most movement seems to be in the wrong direction. And yet, pulling together the latest State of the World’s Mangroves has given me a different perspective. It’s as if we get a look around the corner to what’s possible. A lagoon full of hope, maybe!
The Report itself gets harder and harder to contain. This year we’re close to 190 contributors from over 30 countries. They represent the tip of a hundred, or a thousand, stories that could have been told. Readers might be grateful that we didn’t get thousands, but I think the point these stories make is captured by the phrase in Chapter 6 “from ambition to action”.
While we’ve talked in the past about “ecosystems of hope” and while we’ve told powerful stories, what is really needed now is action: uptake, at scale, everywhere.
There are two headlines this year.
The first is the much-celebrated turnaround in mangrove coverage. Overall, mangroves are now increasing in extent, year on year. Starting, perhaps to claw back a century or more of losses.
It is great news and quite a few of us have been celebrating. But it does need to be muted a little – much of the change is expansion in new areas and some of the critical old-growth mangroves are still being lost. We can’t afford to lose any of them, either for biodiversity or for our own well-being. So lets keep up the fight.
The second story is told by the partners. The Global Mangrove Alliance now has over 100 members, but it also has 17 National Chapters – fabulous self-supporting alliances, themselves having many members (42 members in Belize, 37 in Guinea Bissau, 93 in Liberia, 68 in Mexico…).
This is a cascade, and a web. It is an almost unique network where fishing associations and villages can be connected to global NGOs, possible funders, the government, and to each other. The knowledge can flow down, but also up and side to side. The lessons learned in one place have a channel to influence others, sharing best practices and avoiding repetition of past mistakes.
Maybe in the world of the GMA and mangroves more generally we’re providing a model that could resonate further. Where AI is put to remarkable good use in tracking and modeling the distribution and importance of mangroves, where knowledge is decentralized not hoarded and hidden, and where top-down authoritarianism gives way to decentralization.
Still, there’s lots to do.
The GMA set itself up with an almost impossibly ambitious task four years ago – to halt loss, restore half and double protection. Those goals have been more clearly laid out in this report, but when you look at them, up close, they are going to be extremely difficult.
We have four years left until 2030. It won’t be easy, but the ambition is turning to action in front of us and the momentum continues to grow. Striving together is so much better than struggling alone.
State of the World's Mangroves 2026
With over 190 collaborating authors it draws on the full breadth of the Global Mangrove Alliance, a partnership that is driving the rapid and effective dissemination of knowledge – science, best practice, risks and opportunities. Working together, we are moving from broad ambitions to very practical implementation.
