The Living Edge — What Mangroves Still Give Us, and What We Are Losing

From the Heart of Voh to the essence of mangroves

​Mangroves protect coastlines, store carbon and sustain life — yet they are vanishing. From the Heart of Voh to the shores of Mayotte, this is the story of a fragile ecosystem at a turning point.

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I first discovered the power of mangroves not by walking through the mud, but through an image: Yann Arthus-Bertrand’s aerial photograph of the Heart of Voh in New Caledonia. Seen from above, this improbable shape draws a heart within the mangrove forest. To me, it captures what mangroves truly are: a quiet, often overlooked ecosystem — yet vital, a coastal heart beating for the planet.

Mangroves are tropical and subtropical forests growing in the intertidal zone, where saltwater, freshwater and land meet with the rhythm of the tides. They are made of highly specialized trees and shrubs — mangrove species — able to survive extreme salinity and flooding. Globally, scientists recognize around 70 true mangrove species, spread across the coasts of more than 120 countries.
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But to describe mangroves as “just forests” is misleading. They are a keystone ecosystem, a biological crossroads where water, carbon, nutrients and marine life cycles converge.

What a mangrove does — an ecosystem working for usA mangrove is not a line of trees along the shore. It is a living system, constantly active above and below the surface, helping coastal environments remain in balance.

In its waterlogged, oxygen-poor soils, mangroves lock away vast amounts of carbon. This carbon — captured from atmospheric CO₂ — can remain stored for decades or even centuries.

For us, the meaning is simple: as long as this carbon stays buried, it does not fuel climate change. When a mangrove is destroyed, that stored carbon can be released, adding to the greenhouse effect.
Facing the sea, mangroves act as a natural buffer. Their tangled roots slow waves, trap sediments and stabilize shorelines.

​Where mangroves remain, they reduce erosion, dampen storm surges and protect coastal communities from increasingly violent weather. (UNEP overview: ​

https://www.unep.org/explore-topics/oceans-seas/what-we-do/protecting-restoring-blue-carbon-ecosystems)
Below the surface, mangroves are a giant nursery. Thousands of organisms find shelter here: fish larvae, juvenile sharks, crustaceans, mollusks, birds and reptiles. For many species, this is their first refuge before reaching the open sea — a growth space that later sustains reefs and fisheries (FAO module: https://www.fao.org/sustainable-forest-management-toolbox/modules/mangrove-ecosystem-restoration-and-management/en).
They also play a quiet but essential role in water purification by trapping sediments and filtering nutrients, helping protect nearby ecosystems such as seagrass meadows and coral reefs.
For all these reasons, mangroves cannot be treated as scenery. They are a natural infrastructure, silent yet indispensable.

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Major losses… and a fragile recoveryFor decades, mangroves have been cleared, fragmented and transformed — often out of sight. Aquaculture, agriculture, urban expansion and infrastructure have steadily eaten away at these amphibious forests.

With the satellite era, monitoring has become far more precise. The global reference today is Global Mangrove Watch. According to this dataset, between 1996 and 2020 the world lost 5,245 km² of mangroves, about 3.4% of the global total
(Source: Bunting et al., 2022, Remote Sensing; platform update via Wetlands International: https://www.wetlands.org/global-mangrove-watch-platform-updated-with-the-latest-data-to-2020/).

That is nearly the size of the U.S. state of Delaware — an entire living coastline erased in a single generation.

Data from the FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations) confirm this trend: the rate of loss has slowed since the 2000s, but it has not stopped
(FAO global assessment 2000–2020:
​https://openknowledge.fao.org/server/api/core/bitstreams/7f15adf1-2756-4e86-a6dd-77d0fc26d97c/content).

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The Women of the Mangrove. The Mamas Shingos of MayotteIn Mayotte, along the edges of the lagoon, groups of women known as the mamas Shingos still harvest shellfish and small marine life in the mangrove at low tide. Their movements follow the same rhythm as the tides, passed from generation to generation.
They also collect seawater and let it slowly evaporate in shallow basins under the sun, leaving behind coarse crystals of salt. It is a quiet process, shaped by patience and heat — a transformation of the sea itself into something that can be shared, traded, and preserved.
For them, the mangrove is not a concept. It is food, income, knowledge, and identity. When the mangrove recedes, it is not only an ecosystem that disappears, it is a way of living, a fragile balance between survival and nature.
Their presence reminds us of something essential: protecting mangroves is not only about carbon or coastlines. It is about dignity, continuity, and the right to remain connected to the living world.

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Blue carbon: a real promise — but not a magic solution“Blue carbon” is now a central argument for protecting mangroves — and rightly so. They store enormous amounts of carbon, especially in their soils. When a mangrove is destroyed, this carbon can be released into the atmosphere, worsening climate change.

Globally, mangroves store around 6.4 billion tonnes of carbon in their biomass and soils equivalent to more than 23 billion tonnes of CO₂. That is roughly equal to over five years of total European Union emissions.

But reality is more complex. Mangrove soils can also emit other greenhouse gases, such as methane (CH₄) and nitrous oxide (N₂O) — far more powerful than CO₂. Depending on local conditions, these emissions can reduce part of the net climate benefit
(Rosentreter et al., 2021: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1029/2020GB006858).
This does not mean mangroves are “bad” for the climate.

It means their impact depends on the site, the ecosystem’s health, and how it is protected or restored. The key message is this: mangroves are a powerful climate ally, but they cannot be reduced to a single carbon number. Protecting the whole ecosystem matters more than counting tonnes of CO₂.

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False good solutionsThe first trap is to confuse planting with restoring. Planting mangroves without restoring water flows, tides and sediments often leads to failure. The result may look reassuring — but the ecosystem does not function.

Another risk is turning blue carbon into a communication tool, where the credit becomes the goal rather than the ecosystem itself : 
​https://mangroveactionproject.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/SOWM-2024-HR.pdf).

A necessary shiftThese mistakes do not come from bad intentions, but from a misunderstood urgency. Faced with collapse, we wanted quick, visible action. But science now shows that mangroves cannot be rebuilt like a park. They are shaped by water, tides, sediments and time. By confusing speed with effectiveness, we sometimes created the illusion of rescue. This shift in understanding marks a turning point: to protect is not to replace — it is to allow life to continue.

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Real solutionsThe most effective solution is still the simplest: protect the mangroves that remain. Every hectare preserved avoids emissions, shields coasts and sustains nurseries.
When restoration is necessary, it must start by restoring natural hydrology, then letting regeneration do its work. It is slower — but infinitely more durable.

Conclusion :
So the heart can keep beatingThe Heart of Voh is not just a famous photograph. It is a fragile symbol, suspended in time. Nothing guarantees it will still be visible tomorrow — or that other mangroves will have the chance to trace, by chance, what we recognize as a heart.
Protecting mangroves is not about saving a distant landscape.

It is about preserving a vital function of the planet — a discreet but essential organ, without which our coasts, oceans and climate become more unstable.

If we want future generations to still glimpse a heart beating from the sky — in Voh or elsewhere  then mangroves must no longer be a backdrop we watch disappear, but a living system we choose to protect.
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Because in protecting mangroves, we are not only defending the shoreline 
We are protecting the very heart of our world.