Mangroves

The assessment includes a global review of literature and legal information on international and national law and policy, a desk assessment of mangrove-related legal instruments in India, Kenya and Mexico, and an in-depth evaluation of effectiveness of mangrove-related law in Costa Rica, Madagascar and Vietnam.

Mangroves are among the most important ecosystems on the planet. They provide nursery grounds for a wide variety of marine and landbased species, sustain livelihoods of coastal populations, and protection from ocean swell and extreme weather events. However, mangroves are being cleared, degraded, or lost at a rapid pace. This report is targeted at project developers, donors and investors.

Mangroves provide an array of benefits to coastal communities, but in spite of their many values, mangroves in Asia continue to be converted to other land uses and sustainable financing for their protection has not been forthcoming.

IUCN Sri Lanka is the National Secretariat of Mangroves for the Future (MFF) regional initiative that is being implemented in the country since 2008. MFF Sri Lanka implemented over 82 small grants to date and as an innovative step, decided to allocate resources to better understand the post-project sustainability of MFF projects. Fifty nine (59) projects have been implemented during 2009-2012 of which 54 were evaluated.

In this publication, several case studies from the African continent illustrate the "nature-based solutions" approach and offer hope that effective solutions to the climate change dilemma can be addressed through local responses that also achieve mutual benefits for biodiversity conservation and community resilience.

The Responsive Forest Governance Initiative (RFGI) is an Africa-wide environmental-governance research and training program focusing on enabling responsive and accountable decentralization to strengthen the representation of forest-based rural people in local-government decision making.