1.

The Mangrove Breakthrough

How to achieve our goal for people, planet, and biodiversity

The Mangrove Breakthrough brings together technical experts, civil society organizations, financial
institutions, governments, Indigenous Peoples and local communities and funding agencies to
accelerate a comprehensive, coordinated, global approach to mangrove conservation and
restoration at a scale that matters. Through a Community of Action, endorsers commit to
ambitious but achievable contributions toward a goal of securing the future of 15 million hectares
of mangrove globally by 2030. This will be achieved by halting mangrove losses, restoring half of
recent losses, and doubling protection of mangroves globally, all supported by raising USD $4
billion in sustainable finance. The following Principles1 serve as guardrails, so endorsers can
contribute to the Breakthrough in meaningful and productive ways that make sense for them.

The Mangrove Breakthrough Principles

1. Safeguard nature and 2. Employ the best information
3. Empower people
maximize biodiversity and practices
4. Align to the broader context –
5. Design for sustainability 6. Mobilize high-integrity capital
operate locally and contextually

Guiding Principle 1: Safeguard Nature and Maximize Biodiversity

Protecting the remaining intact mangrove ecosystems, enhancing their resilience, and
implementing science-based ecological restoration protocols

At the bare minimum, negative impacts for nature need to be understood and avoided: no planting
in valuable mudflats or seagrass beds or on top of naturally regenerating saplings. Restoration and
conservation actions should purposefully strive for positive biodiversity impacts Instead of hoping
that an area and services can be fully restored later, conserve what is there now. When you do
need to restore, instead of planting monocultures, aim for restoring a mangrove ecosystem with
multiple species, natural hydrological flows, and natural zonation. A biodiverse mangrove
ecosystem has greater variety in root types, tree sizes, foliage, and fruits, thus fulfilling different
functions and attracting diverse fauna. This results in the provisioning of multiple goods (timber,
fodder, honey, fruits, and fish) and services (enhanced coastal protection, carbon storage, water
purification, fisheries enhancement). Such mangroves are also likely to be more resilient to climate
change.

1These Principles were developed to align with the definition of high quality as outlined here: https://merid.org/high-
quality-blue-carbon/

1
Principle 2: Employ the Best Information and Practices

Using the best available science-based knowledge, including indigenous, traditional, and local
knowledge, for mangrove interventions

Make use of the best available science, including lab and field-based measurements as well as
traditional and local knowledge and experiences that has often been developed and refined over
centuries. Convene a multi-disciplinary and multi-sectoral team to help integrate biophysical as
well as socio-economic aspects and to ensure different stakeholder perspectives are represented
and addressed. System understanding at all these levels is needed to get to the root causes of
mangrove loss and degradation, so that interventions can be tailored accordingly. Given that
mangroves depend on water and sediment coming from the land as well as the sea, such
connections need to be understood and accommodated at the land and seascape scale for
mangroves to thrive. These dynamic environments require a ‘learning by doing attitude’ adaptive
management approach to be successful. Therefore, scientific and historical knowledge of the local
landscape should be paired with traditional knowledge as well as proven conservation and
restoration methods to optimize project outcomes and longevity.

Principle 3: Empower People

Implementing, in all aspects of project design, social safeguards to protect and enhance community
member rights, knowledge, and leadership to achieve fair and equitable benefit sharing

Mangroves provide essential services to protect and sustain coastal communities, including
ensuring water quality, food provision, livelihoods, climate mitigation, and climate adaptation.
Local actors – and their representative institutions – need to be capacitated to meaningfully
engage and advocate for their needs in all aspects of a project including design, implementation,
and policy dialogues. The project governance structure needs to facilitate participation and
decision making as well as fair and equitable benefit sharing. Mangroves can offer many tangible
benefits to local communities, some of which can be monetized such as ecotourism, wild capture
fisheries and provision of food and fodder. Restoration and conservation could aim to create a
mangrove-based economy that optimizes such mangrove benefits while avoiding over-
exploitation and introducing alternative livelihoods that do not degrade mangroves. Wealth
acquisition should be aligned with nature’s capacity, and it needs to take into consideration the
aspirations of equitable societies. Power dynamics must be transformed to enable marginalized
communities access to resources through political systems characterized by good governance,
high levels of local participation, and transparency. The safety of all people, but especially
vulnerable and marginalized populations such as women, children, Indigenous Peoples, and other
minority groups should be prioritized in all aspects.

2
Principle 4: Align to the Broader Context - operate locally and contextually

Operating in the local context, including cultural customs, resource use, management and
ownership regimes, while taking a land and seascape approach and aligning to international trends
and their local implications

Operating in the local context includes cultural customs, gender and power dynamics, resource
use, management, and ownership regimes, and social, policy and governance structures. Problems
and opportunities should be tackled and pursued at all levels, based on the recognition that local
resource concerns are impacted by decisions and trends emanating from local, national, and
international levels. Additionally, given their position between land and sea, there are typically
several government departments involved from local to national level, each with different
mandates and targets. One ministry may strive to protect the mangrove for carbon storage and
coastal protection while the other may want to advance aquaculture for food security and yet
another may seek to develop a national highway or waterfront city along the coast. Additionally,
the communities along coastlines are often small and operating independently of one another,
rather than in a coordinated or homogeneous fashion. For these reasons, the land and resource
ownership, use rights and management regimes as well as cultural considerations are a patchwork
and sometimes unclear in mangroves. Thus, different perspectives need to be aligned in a shared
vision and plan.

Principle 5: Design for Sustainability

Creating sustainable mangrove projects and programs needs to be inclusive of how these initiatives
will last into the future, including financing, threat abatement, community stewardship, and
climate change

Any effort to conserve and restore nature comes with risks pertaining to sustainability beyond the
project lifetime. Risks related to changes in political priorities, long-term financing of interventions,
changes in societal needs, and climate change all pose concerns. Mitigation measures should be
put in place to address risk of reversal and ensure durability for the longest timescale possible.
Some options include social and livelihood improvements to reduce pressures on the ecosystem
resources, creating local ownership in mangrove projects as well as creating an enabling policy
environment and designing solutions that address biophysical and socio-economic root causes of
loss and degradation. Implementation of restoration does not automatically mean restoration is
successful, and it is suggested that it takes at least 5-years to assess the success of a restoration
project. In developing restoration projects, an intermediatory marker which would suggest a
positive trend towards restoration can come after the first year. Large scale trends in socio-
political dynamics and human activities (such as increased migration of people to the coast) can
also impact the success of a project. Additional biodiversity loss or species movement might
deliver cumulative or accelerated negative impacts. While these forces are outside the immediate
control of the project, they should be accounted for and addressed in adaptive management
plans.

3
Principle 6: Mobilize High Integrity Capital

Ensuring capital flows at the scale needed and allowing funding to be distributed to ready-to-scale
projects

There is currently a gap between global ambition for mangrove protection and restoration and the
reality on the ground, where finance to jumpstart new projects and programs, and long-term
finance to maintain current efforts, is insufficient. Reverting the trend of loss and degradation
requires transformational societal changes as well as large-scale restoration for those mangroves
that are not irretrievably lost. Philanthropic and public financing alone cannot foot the bill with
the urgency needed. Private sector funding must be mobilised at scale and at speed alongside.
However, finance needs to be tailored to the context, support high-quality projects and programs
(that adhere to these principles), and ensure fair and equitable disbursement. On the other side,
funders need to also be held accountable. If they are funding climate mitigation strategies in
mangroves, they also need to be reducing their own emissions, investments in mangroves need
to have clear and fair terms that all impacted communities and stakeholders agree to, and risks
need to be shared.