Side event details

Mangroves constitute globally important wetland ecosystems of key relevance to the Ramsar Convention (categorised as Intertidal forested wetlands, type I). They provide a wide range of important ecosystem system services that are relevant to both local communities and to the surrounding coastal and marine environments, including e.g. storm protection, erosion control, and fisheries enhancement. Mangroves furthermore constitute important pools for carbon storage, and contribute to the mitigation of certain impacts of climate change.

Despite their vital importance however, mangroves have for the past few decades undergone significant negative changes globally, mainly due to anthropogenic activities. Consistent and up-to-date information on the state and change trends of mangroves is therefore critically required to support local and national governments and NGOs to develop management plans for mangrove sustainable use and restoration.

The Global Mangrove Watch (GMW) is an initiative for mapping and monitoring of the status and trends of mangroves at local to national and global scales, derived from Earth observation (EO) data. The foundation of the GMW are the annual maps of global mangrove extent and change, but has been gradually expanded to include mangrove blue carbon, above-ground biomass, soil carbon, mangrove restoration potential, and protected areas. Over the African continent, the GMW provides near-real time mangrove disturbance alerts. All mangrove datasets are available in the public domain and accessible on an online interactive analysis platform.

This proposed COP14 Side Event aims to demonstrate how the GMW datasets and user tools can be used to support Ramsar Contracting Parties - in particular those without own national mangrove monitoring systems - with data on their mangrove resources in support of national wetland inventories, mangrove management and restoration, and reporting to Ramsar and other international agreements, including on Sustainable Development Goal, Indicator 6.6.1.
 

Proposed Side Event schedule:

• Overview of the Global Mangrove Watch datasets, including the recently released 1996-2020 global mangrove extent and change maps (Pete Bunting, Aberystwyth University)
• Demonstration of the GMW Platform and tools for national analysis (Lammert Hilarides, Wetlands International)
• Application example: Mangrove Restoration Potential (Thomas Worthington, University of Cambridge)
• The State of the World’s Mangroves - Report 2022 (Mark Spalding, The Nature Conservancy).
• Q&A and Open Floor Discussions. (Moderator: Ake Rosenqvist, JAXA/soloEO)

The event will be jointly hosted by the Global Mangrove Watch Partnership (Aberystwyth University, soloEO, Wetlands International, and The Nature Conservancy) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), in collaboration with the Group on Earth Observations (GEO Wetlands).