Mangrove planting in Marotaola, Madagascar

Context

Madagascar is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately 400 kilometres off the coast of East Africa. It is the world’s second largest island country, after Indonesia, and the island of Madagascar itself is the fourth largest island in the world. The country is considered a biodiversity hotspot, and over 90% of its wildlife is found nowhere else on Earth.

In recent years, vast areas of Madagascar’s original forests have been destroyed, displacing entire animal species and diminishing local people’s ability to farm and live on the land. Entire mangrove estuaries are also gone, leaving the bare earth to wash away into the sea. These mangrove forests are not only crucial carbon sinks, they also provide habitats for a wide range of marine species that live in the shallows, and provide vital coastal protection from floods and storms.

Planting Partner

Our projects in Madagascar are run by Eden Reforestation Projects (‘Eden’) – a 501(c)(3) non-profit whose mission is to provide fair-wage employment to impoverished villagers as agents of global forest restoration.

Eden hire local people to grow, plant, and guard to maturity the trees planted through funding from our community – on a massive scale. As well as restoring forest ecosystems, Eden’s “Employ to Plant” methodology results in multiple positive socioeconomic and environment impacts.

Coastal mangrove restoration in Marotaola

Mangroves are a small, coastal tree species that occur worldwide in the tropics and subtropics, and are particularly proficient at absorbing carbon and storing it in their extensive root systems underground. Carbon stored in mangrove forests is considered blue carbon, because it is stored on the coast. In addition to their excellent carbon sequestration abilities, mangroves provide excellent flood and storm protection to the coastal area itself.

Our mangrove restoration efforts in Madagascar support planting locations on parcels of coastal land to the North West of the island, near Mahajanga. Whilst the combined restoration area is wider, to date we have funded mangrove planting spanning an area of around 600 hectares of this degraded coastal region – and as each small pocket of land is planted, our community’s funding is directed to support further planting, further along the coast.

Ecologi’s community has supported mangrove planting in this part of Madagascar ever since our founding in 2019, and we estimate that during the full project period our community will have funded the planting of 13 million mangrove trees here.

Explore the Marotaola site on Restor: here.

https://cms-assets.offset.earth/app/uploads/20210927134742/DJI_0027.mp4

Climate solution #52

Coastal wetland restoration

Along the fringes of coasts, where land and ocean meet, lie the world’s salt marshes, mangroves, and sea grasses. These coastal wetland ecosystems are found on every continent except Antarctica.

They provide nurseries for fish, feeding grounds for migratory birds, a first line of defence against storm surges and floodwaters, and natural filtration systems that boost water quality and recharge aquifers. Relative to their land area, they also sequester huge amounts of carbon in plants aboveground and in roots and soils below.

Coastal wetlands can store five times as much carbon as tropical forests over the long term, mostly in deep wetland soils. The soil of mangrove forests alone may hold the equivalent of more than two years of global emissions—22 billion tons of carbon, much of which would escape if these ecosystems were lost.

Photos from our Madagascar projects