#mangroves

DALAM rangka memperingati Hari Mangrove Sedunia pada 26 Juli, KAI Logistik (Kalog) melaksanakan kegiatan penanaman 270 bibit mangrove di kawasan pesisir Marunda, Jakarta Utara, pada Jumat (3/7).

Kegiatan itu merupakan bagian dari implementasi program Tanggung Jawab Sosial dan Lingkungan (TJSL) perusahaan yang berfokus pada pelestarian lingkungan sekaligus mendukung upaya mitigasi perubahan iklim.

VP of Corporate Secretary Kalog, Dwi Wulandari menyampaikan momentum Hari Mangrove Sedunia menjadi pengingat mereka untuk terus menghadirkan aksi mendukung keberlanjutan. Sebab hal itu merupakan wujud komitmen perusahaan dalam menciptakan dampak positif bagi lingkungan sekaligus memperkuat kolaborasi dengan masyarakat dan para pemangku kepentingan.

“Sejalan dengan komitmen tersebut, kami terus mengembangkan konsep Green Logistics, melalui layanan logistik berbasis kereta api yang lebih efisien dan rendah emisi, serta diimbangi dengan berbagai inisiatif pelestarian lingkungan.”

Always good to start the week off with some good news! This is impressive recovery by any standards and good news not just for people living in these coastal areas, but for all of us. We already know mangroves store up to five times as much carbon as land forests, create and sustain the livelihoods of communities that live in their borders, and are home to an incredible variety of biodiversity. We rely on them much more than we realize.

"Au bord de la mer pendant la periode jurassique" ["On ​​the seaside during the Jurassic period"] from Camille Flammarion's Le monde avant la création de l'homme (1886)

Khung Krabaen mangrove forest

Over the past decade, Ecuador’s shrimp production has nearly quadrupled, overtaking oil as the country’s top export. Nearly all goes to China, the US and Europe, with exports increasing fivefold after tariffs were eliminated.

Production has pushed farms deeper into landscapes already scarred by deforestation. Between 1969 and 1999, Ecuador lost up to 43% of its mangroves, and shrimp farms now cover about 1.5 times the area of the remaining mangroves.

Mangrove clearing is now prohibited, and the industry claims conversion has fallen to near zero even as production has grown dramatically. But residents and scientists say the obliteration of mangrove ecosystems has not ended.

Data from Trase, a supply-chain transparency initiative, shows 427 hectares of mangrove were converted into shrimp ponds between 2014 and 2018, mostly in Guayas province, the country’s main shrimp-farming hub. Another study based on remotely sensed images found 2,900 hectares disappeared in the following four years, nearly half within protected areas.

In January 2024, a navy operation reportedly detected a 10-hectare clearing inside Manglares Don Goyo, in the inner Gulf of Guayaquil – designated a wetland of international importance under the Ramsar Convention.

Luis Ángel Flores Ramírez, a crab harvester in the southern province of El Oro, where shrimp farming first took root, says shrimp farmers now clear smaller patches “under the pretext that they are only pruning them, or that they need to dig a canal or build dykes.”

Further up the coast, Pablo Roberto Demera, leader of Asopesanjocha, an artisanal fishers’ association, describes a similar pattern.

“Every time they repair a pond wall, they clear two more metres, then two more metres,” he says, adding that residents often discover the damage only after patrols find widened walls or fresh loss.

The damage extends beyond clearing. Shrimp farms can interrupt tidal flows that keep mangrove soils wet and oxygenated. “When walls, canals and pond embankments cut off that exchange, the mud can dry and harden, salinity can shift and trees that are still standing may slowly die,” past,” says Eduardo Rebolledo Monsalve, a researcher at the Catholic University in Esmeraldas. 

Shrimp farms also discharge water back into estuaries. Ecuadorian law prohibits releasing untreated waste, which can contain organic matter and nutrients from feed, faeces and fertilisers. However, a 2023 study found mangrove systems around shrimp farms in Esmeraldas had about two and a half times as much ammonium and phosphorus as ordinary mangrove water. A Seafood Watch assessment estimated that more than half of farm waste is released into the environment.

A former shrimp worker from La Libertad recalls being told to release pond water directly into the estuary. He says: “Everything goes straight into the estuary. It all turns white with foam.”

One commonly used substance is sodium metabisulfite, added to harvested shrimp to prevent spoilage. For Mauricio Cruz, a crabber in Huaquillas, such chemicals add to pollution concerns, especially during water exchanges; seeing dead fish is not uncommon.

Máximo Jordán, president of an association of artisanal crabbers and fishers in Puerto Roma, a village surrounded by more than 150 shrimp ponds in the Gulf of Guayaquil, says crabbers spotted pipes they believe carry dredged sediment to the mangroves. “Why don’t they throw it into their own canals?” he asks. “They throw it 300 metres into the forest. It contaminates the trees and kills the crabs.”

Wendy Chávez-Páez, an environmental researcher with the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, says pollution is poorly addressed. She adds: “There is very little funding to investigate these impacts properly. And there’s not much political appetite either, because shrimp is economically important.”

Despite complaints from local communities and campaigners, the president of Ecuador’s National Chamber of Aquaculture, José Antonio Camposano, denies that the shrimp farms affiliated with the association are polluting water. “If I have poor water quality, low oxygen levels, or substances that shouldn’t be there, the shrimp will become stressed, get sick, stop growing, stop eating, and so on,” he says. “In other words, it doesn’t make sense to raise an animal under unfavourable conditions, because that only encourages the spread of disease.”

Making matters worse is a regulatory system that is too weak to detect the damage. In Esmeraldas, with more than 200 shrimp farms, there is one aquaculture inspector, who lacks transport.

Communities can report damage under mangrove custody agreements, in place since 2000. Yet complaints rarely lead to sanctions. The 15 de Enero association, overseeing 3,330 hectares in El Oro, has filed 17 complaints since 2019.

“Unfortunately, we know that they reach the ministry’s legal department, and that’s where it all ends,” says former president Flores Ramírez. “There’s no accountability.”

Flores Ramírez says complainants even risk retaliation. He explains: “When you file a complaint, they see your face. You can put your life at risk.”

One crabber in El Oro echoes his concern, saying: “They’ll come to your house to threaten you. But if we don’t speak out, we also risk having the ministry take away the fishing area we’re allowed to work in.”

🌴🌊❤️‍🩹 Mangrove forests are making a major comeback after years of damage! Crucial in absorbing greenhouse gasses, housing young marine life, and protecting millions of people from storms, mangroves around the world had been deforested for decades for expanding fish farming, agriculture, and housing. New studies, however, show a remarkable reversal of that trend — since 2010, the world has been gaining more mangroves than it has been losing! The recovery is the result of stronger legal protections, restoration efforts, and increased public awareness, allowing crucial mangrove forests to naturally expand and regain lost ground!