This World Biodiversity Day we must recognise the globally important role mangrove forest ecosystems play.

Mangrove forests sustain an incredible abundance of life, store vast amounts of carbon and provide food and income for millions of people around the world. But they are disappearing before our eyes.

This World Biodiversity Day we must recognise the globally important role these ecosystems, and others like them, play in securing a thriving future for all life and act to protect them before it is too late.

Mangrove forests make up one of the most productive and biologically diverse ecosystems on the planet, yet we are destroying them at an alarming rate.

Fish

Logging, climate breakdown, agriculture and urban expansion are decimating these vital coastal ecosystems – since 1980, 20 percent of the world’s mangroves have been lost.

“I live in a coastal area and people depend on the mangrove ecosystem for livelihood, [but] mangroves won’t exist in the future if we don’t take any action to protect them,” Pak Iwan, an Indonesian fisherman, told The Ecologist.