Making Advances for Mangroves
Earth Day 2023
On behalf of the Global Mangrove Alliance, happy Earth Day! We hope you had time to reflect on the amazing benefits and beauty of mangroves around the world. Following are updates from the Alliance coordinating group and membership organizations.
For Your Calendar – MMM6
A variety of members from across the Global Mangrove Alliance plan to attend the sixth Mangroves, Macrobenthos, and Management conference (MMM6) this year in Cartagena, Colombia from July 24-28. Our Alliance is encouraging all interested in mangrove research and mangroves as a nature-based solution to attend and build connections with other experts and stakeholders. More information on the conference is available at https://mmm6.co/.
Coordinating Team Updates
The coordinating team of the GMA oversee the Policy, Science, Communications, Membership, Implementation, National Chapters, and Science Working Groups. Joining the GMA grants you access to these Working Groups.
Science
The GMA is having a change of science leadership. Dr Tom Worthington and Associate Professor Chris Brown are the new co-leads of the Science Working Group.
Dr Worthington aims to guide the science working group to develop new online tools to support mangrove conservation through the Global Mangrove Watch platform. A/Prof Brown will focus on guiding science to address local-scale conservation needs, as well as increasing participation of scientists from the Asia-Pacific region in the GMA science working group.
Policy
Adriana Vidal, Senior Policy Advisor on Climate Change, from IUCN’s Climate Change team, is the new coordinator of the policy working group. Adriana takes over the great work done in previous years at the GMA on policy advancement in support of mangroves, starting with reinforcing the working group’s role in supporting national chapters. GMA partners and members of this working group are identifying ways to build on their current work and existing GMA tools for this purpose. Moreover, the group will continue generating opportunities and leveraging the GMA, its tools, and the Mangrove Breakthrough across international platforms for climate and biodiversity.
New Member Spotlight – IUCN France
IUCN French National Committee is the network of French members and experts of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature. Among its seven programs, one is dedicated to French Overseas Territories with various projects and initiatives, including the French Tropical Wetlands Network which oversees the French Mangrove Monitoring Network aka ‘ROM’.
ROM brings together those who utilize mangroves together with managers, users, public institutions, associations, and scientists to support mangrove conservation efforts in all French overseas territories located in the Caribbean, Amazonia, Indian Ocean and Pacific regions, through capacity building, monitoring and alert, data gathering and analysis, citizen science and education.
To that end, ROM regularly conducts trainings and workshops to promote best practices and inform the network on latest legal and technical advances, facilitates exchange of expertise and promotes regional cooperation. ROM has also developed several decision-making tools such as a restoration guide, a national cartography of mangroves and diachronic analyses, national mangrove indicators, and a mobile app to help identify mangrove species and report disturbances and fauna sightings such as crabs, mollusks, birds, fish or mammals. Its goal is to keep building bridges between science, policy and management to advance mangrove conservation in French territories.
For more information on the work being done by our members, read our full newsletter, available here.
© Conservation International/photo by Sterling Zumbrunn
