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The MAP News
459th Edition Jan 05, 2019 |
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FEATURE Locals seek help to save Pulau Kukup National Park
 MALAYSIA - Established in 1997 under the National Parks (Johor) Corporation Enactment 1989, the 647.5-ha Pulau Kukup National Park protected the second largest mangrove island in the world. The park, which was an integral component of Malaysia’s protected area network, is also of global conservation significance. It was designated as a Wetlands of International Importance (Ramsar site) in 2003 and forms the heart of the Southwest Johor Coast Important Bird Area (IBA) that was designated in 2004. The withdrawal of legal protection will pave the way for large scale development of the island. This is likely to cause the loss of biodiversity and critical ecosystem services, with detrimental impacts at the local, national and global levels. At the local level, for example, our fish stock will be affected, as mangroves are breeding grounds for many commercial fish species. On the global scale, it will contribute towards climate change, since mangroves are important carbon sinks (more carbon is stored in mangroves than most other habitats, including dipterocarp forests). Sign The Petition AFRICA Restoring Ghana’s Mangroves and Depleted Fish Stock  GHANA - 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. READ MORE Coral reef restoration toolkit provides guidance on ‘coral gardening’ strategy  SEYCHELLES - A new toolkit on coral reef restoration has been released by Nature Seychelles, an NGO. The guidance is based on a large-scale coral reef restoration project – called Reef Rescuers – carried out by Nature Seychelles over the past eight years. The toolkit describes how to complete a coral reef restoration project using ‘coral gardening’. This technique takes fragments of corals that have withstood bleaching events and cultivates them for several months before transplanting them to restoration sites. The toolkit describes the protocol for this, and offers guidance on appropriate design, logistics, and execution, based on experience and field-tested methods. The Reef Rescuers project has raised over 40,000 coral fragments in underwater nurseries and transplanted over 24,000 of them onto a 5225-m2 area of degraded reef in Cousin Island Special Reserve, an MPA managed by Nature Seychelles. READ MORE Omani researcher shows how mangroves fight climate change  OMAN - Zakiya Al Afifi, who is currently doing her PhD in environmental sciences from the University of York in the United Kingdom, is studying the role of nature and man coexisting alongside each other, and hopes to share her work with the authorities so they can use it to benefit the country. “Primarily a coastal tree, mangroves have several benefits to the environment, such as coastal erosion prevention and mitigating the effects of wave and storm energy,” said Al Afifi, speaking to the Times of Oman. “They also host species of both ecological and subsistence importance, for example in the case of fish. The research centred around identifying and highlighting the contribution of Al-Qurum and Quriyat mangroves to community well-being,” she added. “It also aimed at identifying the drivers of environmental change affecting these mangrove ecosystems such as storms and urbanisation, and providing recommendations for the sustainable management of mangrove forests at the national level in Oman.” READ MORE ASIA A development project in a Bali mangrove bay gets a new lease on life  INDONESIA - Four months after activists in Bali celebrated what they believed was the end of a controversial plan to develop part of the island’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay, the scheme has been revived by the Indonesian government. In August, PT Tirta Wahana Bali Internasional (TWBI), a property development unit of Indonesian tycoon Tomy Winata’s Artha Graha conglomerate, lost its permit for an ambitious commercial and tourism development in Benoa Bay, an area that serves as a key source of livelihood for thousands of local fishermen. The permit granted the company control of an area spanning 700 hectares (1,730 acres), where it planned to build artificial islands for a multibillion-dollar complex featuring hotels, restaurants, entertainment venues and a convention center. That particular type of permit is automatically annulled if it isn’t renewed after four years. And that’s what happened to PT TWBI, which failed to receive government approval for a renewal. That stemmed from the environment ministry not approving the developer’s environmental impact assessment, known locally as an AMDAL, for its project plans. READ MORE Ministry asks governors to focus on mangroves  CAMBODIA - In a bid to improve environmental protection, the Agriculture Ministry yesterday urged provincial governors along coastal areas to maintain mangrove forests within their jurisdictions. In a letter, Agriculture Minister Veng Sakhon informed the provincial governors of Kep, Preah Sihanouk and Koh Kong to be more attentive in preventing mangrove forests encroachment. “Land is being cleared to make houses and mangrove forests are being fenced off for ownership,” Mr Sakhon said in the letter. “The issuance of land titles have been noticeably happening.” “This practice of issuing land titles in mangrove forests is apparent in fishing communities such as ones in Preah Sihanouk province,” he added. The letter did not detail how many hectares of mangrove forests have been encroached upon. READ MORE There's benefit in them mangroves MALAYSIA - THE recent tsunami in Banten, Indonesia reminded us of the tsunami that happened exactly 14 years ago on Dec 26, which had devastated many countries bordering the Indian Ocean. Many villages on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, too, were badly affected, and most of the survivors are still being haunted by vivid memories of that catastrophic event. The 2004 catastrophe in one way drove home the lesson that Malaysia was not entirely safe from geological disasters. More importantly, the killer waves also taught us the importance of mangroves as they have been proven to blunt the destructive force of tsunamis. Realising this, Malaysia embarked on a mission to rehabilitate mangrove and coastal forests throughout the country’s coastlines. A special annual budget has been continuously allocated for this mission and many rehabilitated areas along the coasts have seen much improvement since the launch of the programme in 2005. The issue is, however, not only about the success of the rehabilitation programme, but also the legal protection and sustainability of the existing and the rehabilitated mangrove habitats. READ MORE Island’s mangrove forests and folklore attract tourists  MYANMAR - To the locals, Pulau Kukup is precious. “There are not many tourist attractions in Pontian,” said seafood restaurant owner Rohaidah Wahab, 43. The island, she said, helped to attract Malaysian and foreign visitors. The Tourism Johor website adds a magical touch to Pulau Kukup, stating that it is “an island shrouded in legends of princesses and curses, or so the folklore says”. It also pointed out that Pulau Kukup is “one of the largest uninhabited mangrove forests in the world” and that it is home to an abundance of flora and fauna. Monkeys and mudskippers can be spotted from the boardwalk. According to Rohaidah, any move to de-gazette the place would become a “huge issue”. The state government, she said, should give some consideration to the people here. READ MORE AMERICAS An indigenous community rejects, then accepts, a protected mangrove area  GUATEMALA - Riding in a small motorboat along the Atlantic coast of Guatemala, Francisco Cuz Acal looked over his left shoulder at the lush forest cover whizzing by. To his right lay nothing but open water. Straight ahead, far off in the distance, he could just barely make out the Belizean coastline behind a misty haze. “There could arrive a time when none of this exists, and our kids who are growing up won’t see any of it if it all is destroyed,” said Cuz Acal, a Q’eqchi’ and vice president of La Guaira Cocolí’s local government. “That’s why it’s important to take care of it and maintain it, so that when they are older, they’ll know what nature is like, what the forest is like, and what the mountains are like.” Designating this site a multiple use area is supposed to ensure that Cuz Acal’s vision comes true. But he didn’t always see it that way. The local Q’eqchi’ initially opposed the designation, and vociferously, for fear it would infringe on their rights to the land. Over time, though, they grew to realize that it was helping ensure the future of the environment and their own community. More than a decade since the site was named a multiple use area, the relationship between the Guatemalan government and local communities is starting to settle into a symbiotic groove, and conservation initiatives, including efforts to decrease overfishing, empower forest guards and run ecotourism projects, are having a noticeable effect on the forests and wildlife. READ MORE Half 0f Costa Rica's regrown forests are gone within two decades  COSTA RICA - Secondary forests—those that regrow naturally after being cleared or degraded—constitute more than half of existing tropical forests. When they are old enough, they support a wide range of species and store carbon at a higher rate than old-growth forest because the trees grow more rapidly. But in southern Costa Rica, a country with strong environmental commitments, young forests are ephemeral, a new study claims. When Leighton Reid, a restoration ecologist at the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, and his colleagues studied the history of secondary forests in a region of Coto Brus canton, Costa Rica, they found that half of them were re-cleared within 20 years. And within 54 years, 85 percent of these young forests were gone, the team reported recently in Conservation Letters. "I wasn't expecting this at all," says Reid, who has worked in Costa Rica for more than a decade studying tropical forest restoration. "I was shocked." READ MORE EUROPE New study looks at increasing the success and effectiveness of mangrove conservation investments  GERMANY - Mangroves are under threat globally due to land conversion, overexploitation, and other human-induced stressors. Various stakeholders, including governments and NGOs, have been working on the conservation and restoration of mangrove ecosystems for years, yet with mixed results. Lack of sustainable finance, beyond an initial project implementation cycle, is often cited as a reason for long-term project failure.A new report by the Save Our Mangroves Now! initiative, co-led by WWF-Germany and IUCN and supported by BMZ, provides guidance on making mangrove conservation investments more sustainable and impactful. As part of the study, the authors looked at the common successes and challenges linked to mangrove conservation and the business case for private sector to engage in conservation efforts.Mangroves provide valuable ecosystem services estimated to be worth thousands to tens of thousands of USD per hectare, and play an important role in climate change mitigation and adaptation.Investing in mangroves can deliver a number of environmental and social benefits. This is of great interest to governments wanting to reduce coastal damage and impact investors wanting to ‘do good’ while earning economic returns. READ MORE OCEANA Deep Seagrass Bed Could Stall Climate Change, If Climate Change Doesn't Kill It First  AUSTRALIA - Amid a sea of dire climate change news, researchers say they've found a rare bright spot. A meadow of seagrass among Australia's Great Barrier Reef — estimated to be twice the size of New Jersey — is soaking up and storing carbon that would otherwise contribute to global warming. Scientists call this carbon-removal powerhouse a "blue carbon sink." The term refers to an ocean or coastal ecosystem — including seagrasses, salt marshes and mangrove forests — that captures carbon compounds from the atmosphere, effectively removing carbon dioxide, a known greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change. "These coastal Blue Carbon ecosystems can sequester or remove carbon from the atmosphere about four times the rate of terrestrial forests on land, and they store about 10 times more carbon in the system itself compared to forest on land," says Jennifer Howard, director of marine climate change at Conservation International. READ MORE  |
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Partnering with mangrove forest communities, grassroots NGOs, researchers and local governments to conserve and restore mangrove forests and related coastal ecosystems, while promoting community-based, sustainable management of coastal resources.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
MAP News Issue 459 - Jan 5, 2019
Thursday, December 20, 2018
MAP News Issue 458 - Dec 22, 2018
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The MAP News
458th Edition Dec. 22, 2018 |
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FEATURE During this year-end giving season, we hope you’ll consider a tax-deductible donation to Mangrove Action Project.
 Over the past 26 years the Mangrove Action Project (MAP) has worked around the globe in giving a voice to mangroves, and in helping to conserve and restore these critical forest wetlands. The world today faces a number of challenges – ranging from climate change, to protecting coastlines from strengthening storms, ensuring food security, and economic and social equality. Luckily, mangroves provide unique solutions to these pressing issues! You may have read or heard recently about a report issued by the world’s leading climate scientists at the UN’s International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), warning us that urgent changes are needed to reverse the course of climate trends. Nearly 2.4 billion people live within 60 miles of the coast, and as temperatures and sea levels continue to rise these areas will be some of the most heavily impacted. Luckily, mangroves have been found to be incredible long-term carbon sinks, storing carbon in the plants themselves, but also (and more importantly) in the soils below for hundreds and sometimes thousands of years. In the coming months, MAP will be pushing our successful ecology and community-based methods to the forefront of mangrove restoration efforts globally, and will continue engaging current and future generations in these crucial ecosystems. But we can only do so thanks to our amazing network of supporters! During this year-end giving season, we hope you’ll consider a tax-deductible donation to Mangrove Action Project. To make a donation, please visit our donations webpage. READ MORE AFRICA Over Half of the World's Tropical Forests Have Been Destroyed  EGYPT - Biodiversity conservationists have revealed that at least 10 more percent of land than what is currently being used to grow green crops will be required to successfully replace fossil fuels with alternatives derived from natural sources such as biofuel. Speaking to government ministers and other high level representatives at the ongoing Biodiversity Conference in Egypt, Anne Larigauderie, executive secretary of the Intergovernmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), said that the increase in the need for land for energy-related uses could undermine natural habitats across the world. Deforestation and forest degradation are one of the biggest threats to forests worldwide and, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), in the last 60 years, over half of the tropical forests worldwide have been destroyed. Currently, one of the biggest drivers of deforestation is the meat industry with over 2.71 million hectares of tropical forests destroyed to pasture for beef cattle every year. To put it into perspective, this is more than half of tropical deforestation in South America, and more than five times as much as any other commodity in the region. Other significant drivers also include wood products, soybeans, and palm oil. READ MORE African fishing communities face 'extinction' as blue economy grows  KENYA - Fishing communities along Africa’s coastline are at a greater risk of extinction as countries eye oceans for tourism, industrial fishing and exploration revenue to jumpstart their “blue economies,” U.N. experts and activists said on Monday. The continent’s 38 coastal and island states have in recent years moved to tap ocean resources through commercial fishing, marine tourism and sea-bed mining, according to the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA). “There is a great risk and a great danger that those communities will be marginalized,” said Joseph Zelasney, a fishery officer at U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). “The resources that they depend on will be decimated,” he added at a side event at the Blue Economy Conference organized by Kenya, Canada and Japan in Nairobi. The world’s poorest continent hosts a blue economy estimated at $1 trillion but loses $42 billion a year to illegal fishing and logging of mangroves along the coast, according to UNECA estimates. Seismic waves generated by prospectors to search for minerals, oil and gases along the ocean floor have scared away fish stocks, said Dawda Saine of the Confederation of African Artisanal Fishing in Gambia. READ MORE ASIA As tides rise, Indian villagers find a friend in mangroves  INDIA - Pushpo Mandal still remembers the day, nine years ago, when Cyclone Aila struck and the slender creek at the southern edge of her village swelled into a watery monster. Tall tidal waves broke through the earth embankment, rushing into homes and fields, “gulping down everything that came their way”, recalled Mandal from Patharpara village on the coast of India’s West Bengal state. Patharpara, in the Gosaba block of South 24 Parganas district, near the border with Bangladesh, was among the many Sundarbans villages devastated by the ferocious 2009 storm. Yet while the memory still haunts them, villagers have learned lessons from the destruction – planting mangroves to reinforce the embankments that protect their homes and fields from tidal surges. Similar initiatives are also underway in other parts of India’s coastal states, such as Odisha and Tamil Nadu, as well as in Bangladesh, Thailand, Indonesia and Sri Lanka. READ MORE Mangrove destruction cases doubled in 2018, but no convictions  INDIA - The city recorded 275 cases of mangrove destruction in 2018, almost double of last year’s 138 and 141 cases in 2016, according to a year-end report by the state mangrove cell. While 271 cases were reported on government land in the city, four were in private forests. Mumbai has 6,600 hectares (ha) of mangrove cover, with 6,400 ha in the suburbs and 200 ha in south Mumbai. Of this, close to 4,500 ha is on government-owned land and remaining in private areas. Fifty-eight people– 35 from the western suburbs, 13 from other parts of the city, and 10 from Navi Mumbai – were arrested for violations of Indian Forest Act, 1927, Environment Protection Act, 1986, coastal regulation zone laws and Wildlife Protection Act, 1972. A total of 44 vehicles were seized, and 1,881 shanties destroyed and cleared from mangrove forests. On September 17, a division bench of justice Abhay Oka and justice Riyaz Chagla of the Bombay high court (HC) had ordered the state to launch criminal action against those who destroy mangroves. However, no convictions were reported this year so far. READ MORE Pakistan's dams threaten mangroves and livelihoods  PAKISTAN - Big dams and reservoirs in Pakistan are slowly depleting its lush mangroves. The destruction is also affecting local fishermen, who have to look for alternative sources of income. S. Khan reports from Karachi. Fifty-five-year old Mohammad Yaqoob is dejected. The fisherman lives in Pakistan's southern port city of Karachi and has five children. He has just returned from a fishing expedition with a meagre catch, not even enough to recover the money he spent on the boat and diesel. But things were not always like this. Back in the day, Yaqoob's forefathers managed to catch tons of fish, shrimps and prawns. Now, a drop in the number of fish they can catch is forcing many fishermen in Karachi to give up their traditional profession and look for other means of livelihood. This phenomenon is not confined to the largest city of Pakistan; other parts of Sindh province are also facing a drop in the numbers of fish, shrimp and prawns. Dildar Hussain Mallah, a fisherman from Dadu district, has already decided to keep his children away from fishing. There is not enough water in Indus River now, he tells DW, adding that several areas of the province that used to have plenty of water are dry now. READ MORE Mumbai gets nod to build 10-foot walls to protect mangroves  INDIA - The construction of 10-feet walls along vulnerable and environmentally crucial mangrove forests across the city can now begin after the state mangrove cell received its final clearance. While the Maharashtra Coastal Zone Management Authority (MCZMA) issued clearances earlier this year, the State Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA) issued its clearance, eliminating the last hurdle before construction. “We cleared the proposal as the Bombay high court (HC) recommended the need for a wall around mangrove areas. Protecting these trees is of utmost importance for a city like Mumbai where flooding concerns have been there since 2005,” said Johny Joseph, chairman, SEIAA. The state mangrove cell said they received the details in a letter earlier this week based on the decision made during the SEIAA meeting last month with a few directions. “Clearances have been issued based on the fact that high-tide water ingress should not be blocked at any cost. We have suggested construction of culverts or under walkways,” said Joseph. The walls have been planned on the landward side across six locations — Sai Dham Nagar in Charkop; near Lagoon Road in Malwani-Malad; along the Eastern Express Highway in Kannamwar Nagar, Vikhroli; Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar, Colaba; Bhakti Park in Wadala and Shivneri Nagar Mandala, Mankhurd.READ MORE Kerala coast contains ecologically and socio-economically most vulnerable stretches  INDIA - Home to ‘Venice of the East’, the coastal district of Alappuzha in the south Indian state of Kerala, and forested hills in tourist-magnets Idukki and Wayanad, are “very highly vulnerable” to climate change, says a recently released vulnerability index of the flood-battered state. Bringing both environmental and socio-economic factors into the picture, researchers led by the University of Kerala, assessed the local dimensions of vulnerability in the tropical state of Kerala, using a specifically designed composite vulnerability index. Kerala has a very long coastline of 570 km, out of which close to 60 percent is prone to severe sea erosion, points out the Kerala State Action Plan on Climate Change. “The coastal wetlands, lagoons and mangroves, which are unique fragile coastal ecosystems in Kerala, are under the combined threat of projected sea level rise and saltwater intrusion,” S. Sarun, the lead author of the study, told Mongabay-India. “Hence, those districts that have (their) maximum geographical area under these ecosystems have the highest vulnerability,” said Sarun, of the department of geography, University College, University of Kerala.READ MORE AMERICAS Energy watchdog orders halt to work on new refinery after mangroves cleared  MEXICO - Mexico’s energy sector watchdog has ordered that preparatory work on the Tabasco site where a new oil refinery is to be built must stop after mangroves were allegedly cleared without environmental authorization. The Agency for Safety, Energy and the Environment (ASEA) directed the company Sistemas Empresariales del Golfo (SEG) to immediately cease all activities that alter the condition of the site, which is located on the Gulf of Mexico coast at Dos Bocas. The Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda) filed complaints last month when both ASEA and the federal Environmental Protection Agency (Profepa) claimed that neither environmental authorization nor permission to change the land use of the site had been granted before work began. The National Commission for the Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity (Conabio) confirmed the presence of mangroves on the site before the preparatory work took place. READ MORE Warmer winters trigger changes in Texas bays  USA - A couple of degrees of temperature and a few inches of water might seem hardly worth noticing. But those slight changes are having and stand to have effects — subtle and significant, understood and still uncertain — on the state’s coastal bays and the estuaries, the marine life tied to them and the people who enjoy those resources. Almost 20,000 acres — 31 square miles — of salt marsh, the oyster grass-dominated matrix of wetlands that is the super-charged engine driving inshore coastal fisheries and providing recreation for more than a million anglers and livelihood for tens of thousands, disappeared from estuaries along Texas’ coast between 1990 and 2010. Over the same 20 years, the amount of black mangrove in the shallows rimming the state’s coastal estuaries grew by approximately 4,000 acres, much of that growth in areas along the upper coast, where the tropical shrub had not been previously documented. In many cases, the expansion of the tropical mangroves has come at the expense of the more productive temperate salt marsh.READ MORE OCEANA Protecting mangroves in South Pacific  FIJI - Solomoni Naisau grew up not really knowing or fully understanding the importance of our natural ecosystem. He was taught that the natural ecosystem was given to mankind to use to satisfy their basic needs, but he was not fully aware of the importance of the protections of this same natural ecosystem. “As a young boy, I remember when we are told to go and collect firewood, we would just go down and look for mangrove. So we will cut mangrove for our firewood and head back to the village. “We know the importance of mangrove is it provides us with firewood, medicine and also where we can fish,” Mr Naisau. READ MORE |
Video: Mangroves for the Future - A look bacK. As the latest phase of Mangroves for the Future (MFF) draws to a close, this video highlights some of the project’s most successful initiatives – from local women supporting national park management in Viet Nam to an island in the Maldives that has become a model for waste management, and everything in between. View Here Volunteer with MAP - LEARN MORE
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