Egypt has announced that it is replanting mangroves on the Red Sea coast as part of a programme to boost biodiversity, protect coastlines and fight climate change and its impacts.
Reports show that after decades of destruction that saw the mangroves cleared, all that remained were fragmented patches totalling some 500 hectares (1,200 acres), the size of only a few hundred football pitches.
Mangroves also have a powerful impact on combating climate change. The resilient trees “punch above their weight” absorbing five times more carbon than forests on land, according to the UN Environment Programme (UNEP).
The stands of trees also help filter out water pollution and act as a natural barrier against rising seas and extreme weather, shielding coastal communities from destructive storms.
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UNEP calculates that protecting mangroves is a thousand times cheaper than building seawalls over the same distance.
However, despite their value, mangroves have been annihilated worldwide at a rapid speed. Over a third of mangroves globally have been lost globally, researchers estimate, with losses up to 80 per cent in some coastlines of the Indian Ocean.
The head of Egypt’s agriculture syndicate, Sayed Khalifa who is leading mangrove replanting efforts, called the unique plants a “treasure” because of their ability to grow in salt water where they face no problems of drought.
“It’s an entire ecosystem,” Khalifa said. “When you plant mangroves, marine life, crustaceans and birds all flock in.”
Together with his team, Khalifa is growing tens of thousands of seedlings in a nursery, which are then used to rehabilitate six key areas on the Red Sea and Sinai coast, aiming to replant some 210 hectares.
However, he dreams of extending the mangroves as far “as possible,” pointing past a yacht marina some six kilometres (four miles) to the south. The about US$50,000-a-year government-backed programme was launched five years ago.
Story was adapted from Africanews.
