For some reason, there’s been a spate of mangrove stories lately. First there was a PNAS paper about the value of Mexican mangroves. That’s behind a paywall, but it was enthusiastically picked up, including by National Geographic and SciDevNet. ((Not to mention Kazinform.)) The latter followed-up with a story about mangrove planting not being done right in the Philippines, based on a paper in Wetlands Ecology and Management. That was also widely picked up, and occasionally given a local slant, as for example in Abu Dhabi. Yesterday there was a story from Fiji. And there have been questions in the Pakistani parliament.
Maybe the media interest has to do with the International Wetlands Conference, which just closed in Brazil. Predictably, participants
…warn[ed] against creating energy and food croplands at the expense of natural vegetation and of carelessly allowing agriculture to encroach on wetlands, which causes damage through sediment, fertilizer and pesticide pollution.
But of course there’s a lot of agriculture that takes place within wetlands:
A recent study shows a large wetland in arid northern Nigeria yielded an economic benefit in fish, firewood, cattle grazing lands and natural crop irrigation 30 times greater than the yield of water being diverted from the wetland into a costly irrigation project.
And climate change is expected to have a devastating effect:
According to South African research, an estimated 1 to 2 million rural poor in that country alone could be displaced as wetlands dry up, placing further strain on urban centres to create accommodation and employment.
