MAP News Issue #586 – Dec 02, 2023

USA – Mangrove Action Project’s youth education program has been inspiring children for decades by teaching the essential value that mangroves bring to their community. Our international children’s art calendar inspired children across the globe to take pens and paint in hand and submit works of art with the hope of being included. Over 350 artworks were submitted from 45 countries with 13 winning pieces selected for the 2024 Children’s Mangrove Art Calendar and another 80 selected for MAP’s Art Contest Gallery located on our website.(We’ll share a link to the gallery next month.) You can receive a copy of our children’s international mangrove art calendar as a free gift by making a donation of $100 or more on our website. We think you’ll appreciate these beautiful, monthly works of art almost as much as our budding artists enjoyed creating them. For questions about multiple calendar orders please contact us at: info@mangroveactionproject.org Thank you! 

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PERU – The Amazonian Indigenous movement is in collective mourning for the loss of Quinto Inuma Alvarado, a much admired and prominent Kichwa leader of the Santa Rosillo de Yanayacu community, in the San Martin region of the northern Peruvian Amazon. Quinto Inuma was a tireless defender of the human rights and territory of his community. Because of that he was murdered by hooded men on his way back from an event in the city of Pucallpa, Ucayali. This killing, which Quinto Inuma himself had repeatedly demanded State action to prevent, highlights the vulnerability of Indigenous leaders who face constant threats in the region. “So many years of suffering, I see no results. What have we received? Physical and psychological abuse. For the Peruvian state, with the corruption that exists today, informality trumps legality. If we assert our legal rights, they don’t believe us. Illegality wins. That’s the country we live in”, Quinto Inuma Alvatado in 2020 in a report Ending Impunity  

GLOBAL – This online platform is dedicated to raising the visibility of the ocean and showcasing why the ocean matters in climate negotiations and to all life on our planet. It aims to democratize the ocean at COPs and promote unity and inclusivity, whilst increasing knowledge, commitment, and action for the ocean-climate nexus at key events during the UN Climate Conference (COP28) in Dubai, UAE, 30 November-12 December 2023. It is also a key tool in increasing transparency and equitable access to climate discussions and information. Registration is free and will provide you with online access to live ocean events on 22 November, 30 November, 8 December, 12 December and on-demand content from 22 November 2023 – 12 January 2024. All you will need is a Wi-Fi connection and a smart phone, tablet, or computer. We invite you to register your COP28 ocean-related events in the Ocean Events Tracker. Entries will become part of a calendar of ocean events accessible through the Virtual Ocean Pavilion and based on information gathered through the Tracker.

The sun sits low in the sky as David Borbón walks from one young mangrove to another, treading carefully so as not to disturb their roots. Borbón first arrived in El Delgadito as a young man in 1980, and he returned seasonally for the fishing—lobster, sea bass, halibut, and clams. “[Back then], mangroves were just branches that were in the way of navigating to go fishing. I didn’t have the slightest idea of their importance,” he recalls. By the time he permanently settled in the community in the early 2000s, he was hearing stories of overfishing, even in this remote area. Fishermen boated farther, used more gear and more gas, yet still came back with smaller catches and smaller fish. Borbón and his wife, Ana María Peralta, could see the changes but weren’t sure what to do. A conversation with their daughter, who was away at university, gave them insight into their next steps. She told them what she had been learning about mangroves: how they prevented coastal erosion, stored carbon, and provided a nursery habitat for myriad fish and crustacean species, many the same as those Borbón and other fishermen in El Delgadito were catching. The trees he had barely paid any attention to became the sole focus of his attention.

USA – The Mangroves and their ecological importance are not only widely acknowledged, but also scientifically proven across the globe. According to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), the Mangroves are extremely important to the coastal ecosystems. The wide variety of their ecological services includes serving as biodiversity hotspots, maintainers of water quality, sequesters of carbon, and providers of livelihood, among many others. They also serve as a buffer between marine and terrestrial communities and protect shorelines from damaging winds, waves, and floods. Because of these diverse benefits, the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change (MoEF&CC) recognizes them as also being called as ‘Tidal Forests’, ‘Coastal Woodlands’, ‘Walking Forest in the Sea’, ‘Root of the Sea’ and ‘Oceanic Rain Forests’. Therefore, the importance of mangrove protection, preservation and increasing their cover, especially in the contemporary world of climate change is emphasized by many nations globally. The NDMA itself recognizes that conserving and restoring mangroves is essential to fighting climate change, and the warming of the global climate.

USA – The Sanibel-Captiva Conservation Foundation’s Coastal Watch will host an Adopt-A-Mangrove Adoption Day on Dec. 1 from 9 a.m. to noon at the Native Landscapes & Garden Center at the Bailey Homestead Preserve, at 1300 Periwinkle Way, Sanibel. The Adopt-A-Mangrove program invites local community members to “adopt” mangroves to nurture at their homes. Those interested can pick up their mangrove seedling(s) at the event. Adopted plants will eventually be returned to the SCCF and planted at one of the shoreline restoration sites

MYANMAR – Along Asian coastlines, there are many areas where rural communities are experiencing alarming rates of sea-level rise due to the loss of their mangrove cover. Europe also has lost half of its wetlands, much of it through drainage. Last year, the Andalusian parliament legalized the widespread abstraction of underground water by strawberry farmers, which is drying up the Doñana wetland and leading to the desertification of Spain. Degradation of Sahelian wetlands in north-central Africa has caused resource scarcity, undermining human well-being and compelling people to migrate. In Indonesia, peat swamps are rapidly being logged, burned, and converted for agriculture, causing massive forest fires affecting the respiratory health of millions of people. Meanwhile, as you read this, the world’s largest tropical wetland ecosystem, the Pantanal of Brazil, is being scorched by wildfires. What, you may ask, does this have to do with an annual UN climate conference, COP28, which is focused on emissions reduction and coping with the impacts of a globally heating world? Well, everything.

JAMAICA – “All of this was mangroves,” says marine scientist Mona Webber, pointing toward a line of ghostly gray boulders separating the road from the sea. We’re standing on the side of Norman Manley Highway, a raised road that squiggles along a spit of sand known as the Palisadoes and connects Jamaica’s Norman Manley International Airport with the capital of Kingston. Webber — tall, animated, and wearing a polo shirt emblazoned with the logo of her workplace, the University of the West Indies (UWI) — speaks with zest as she explains how developers took out about 6,000 mangrove trees while reconstructing the road several years ago. A succession of hurricanes, including Ivan in 2004, Dean in 2007, and Gustav in 2008, left the road covered in sand and impassable. “So, after those hurricanes, they raised the road by 2 meters [6 feet] and put boulders on both sides,” Webber says, “and they decided we didn’t need the mangroves.”

MAP is proud to release a report of our annual accomplishments and financial health for the past year. Check out a global map of the places we’re working, and highlights from all of our programs. Thank you to our many supporters who made this work possible, and to all of our friends and partners working to protect mangrove forests, worldwide.

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