In pictures: Kenya’s coastal conservation heroes

Photograph: © SAF – Coastal Care

Excerpts;

Just 30 km south of the booming port town of Mombasa, residents of two tranquil Kenyan villages are making history.

Here, amongst the mud-walled houses and coconut trees, the people of Gazi and Makongeni villages have become the world’s first communities to harness the carbon market through mangrove conservation.

The Mikoko Pamoja (‘mangroves together’) project is restoring Gazi Bay’s coastal ecosystems, with community members planting thousands of mangrove seedlings each year and trading the resulting carbon offset on the global market – protecting the coastline, restoring local fisheries, and bringing in over $25,000 for community initiatives in the project’s first two years alone…

Read Full Article; UNEP (05-10-2018)

Fishing communities in Kenya’s South Coast, net cash and more fish from protecting mangroves, The Star (10-29-2016)

Coastal Kenyan villages bringing their mangrove forest back to life, Guardian UK (02-24-2016)
A community on Kenya’s east coast is fighting climate change with its own mangrove restoration, conservation and carbon-trading project…

Where the land meets the sea: Governing mangrove forests; Forests News (02-02-2017)
As countries ponder how to encourage mangrove conservation, the role of people, rights, and governance institutions should receive equal consideration…

“Where Land Meets the Sea: A Global Review of the Governance and Tenure Dimensions of Coastal Mangrove Forests,” Center for international forestry research; (2016)

The Human Element of Mangrove Management; USAID (12-16-2016)

Sri Lanka to become the first nation in the world to protect all its mangroves; Guardian UK (05-12-2015)
More than half the world’s mangroves have been lost over the last century but all of those surviving in Sri Lanka, one of their most important havens, are now to be protected in an unprecedented operation…

Destruction of Mangroves Costs up to US$42 billion in Economic Damages Annually – UNEP Report (10-14-2014)
The world is losing its mangroves at a faster rate than global deforestation, the United Nations revealed, in a new report “Importance of Mangroves: A Call to Action,” adding that the destruction of the coastal habitats was costing billions in economic damages and impacting millions of lives…

Mangroves protect coastlines, store carbon – and are expanding with climate change; The Conversation (02-09-2018)
Mangroves are providing extremely valuable services and may become even more important as they expand toward the poles. But according to one recent study, many mangrove ecosystems are not building enough new elevation to keep pace with sea level rise…