11 March 2015, Mongabay news - Protecting Mangrove Forests Good For Environment And Economy: UN Global destruction of mangrove forests impacts biodiversity, food security, and the lives and livelihoods of some of the most marginalized communities in the world, according to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Mangroves, which are forests of salt-tolerant trees and shrubs that lie along coastlines in the tropics and subtropics, are also invaluable carbon sinks. And we're not doing nearly enough to protect them, says a recent report.

Released during the Lima, Peru climate conference in December 2014 by UNEP, the report found mangrove forests are being cleared 3-5 times faster than terrestrial forests, costing the world as much as $42 billion in economic damages every year.

For instance, between 2000 and 2010, some 771.07 square kilometers (77,107 hectares or 190,535.5 acres) of Central Africa's mangroves were cleared or degraded, according to UNEP, releasing over 100 million metric tons of C02 and costing billions in infrastructure maintenance and repairs.

Mangroves still occupied a large portion of Gabon's coastline as of 2000, according to data from Global Forest Watch. However, the data indicate some mangroves have been whittled away, with those surrounding Akanda National Park showing signs of forest loss. In total, the area shown in the top-left inset lost more than 2,500 hectares of tree cover from 2001 through 2012 - or more than 4 percent of its forested area.

With around 90 percent of mangroves found in developing countries, UNEP and other organizations assert there is a need for a mechanism by which the developed countries of the world, which are largely responsible for the climate crisis facing our planet, essentially pay developing countries to keep forests intact even as they look for ways to boost their economies and raise their standards of living.

Yet mangroves thus far have not been considered as part of REDD+ strategies at the UN climate talks (REDD stands for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation, a set of mechanisms for lowering deforestation rates in developing countries; REDD+ aims to add safeguards that would conserve primary forests and encourage sustainable management of forests and carbon stocks).

Steiner says that this is a huge missed opportunity for the developed world to not only address the climate crisis, but also to compensate the developing countries of the world that are likely to suffer the most dire impacts of a climate crisis they did not contribute to.

"As the latest Emissions Gap Report makes clear, countries are increasingly aware of how much progress they need to make to limit a global temperature rise to 2°C," Steiner says. "Developing countries have a major climate change mitigation and adaptation asset in the form of mangroves because they hold several times more carbon than terrestrial forests... What is needed now are the right carbon finance mechanisms, and policy interventions, in order to reap the true economic, climate and social gains from this critical ecosystem, which we cannot afford to lose."

According to Steiner, part of the answer lies in ensuring mangroves have a place in REDD+ strategies and other low-carbon development strategies such as National Appropriate Mitigation Actions.

By protecting mangroves through such strategies, conservation organizations are hopeful that they may be saved.

"As countries race to protect their forests, they must also protect the vital mangrove ecosystems along their coastlines," states WRI in their blog post. "With continued data analysis, conservation, management and restoration, we can halt the loss of the world's remaining mangrove forests and begin to reverse it."

Source: http://news.mongabay.com/2015/0311-gfrn-gaworecki-un-mangroves-should-have-more-protections.html#ixzz3Vr08bI7k