From commitments to implementation: How Our Ocean Conference can accelerate investment and action in coastal wetlands
From 16-18 June, the Our Ocean Conference (OOC11) comes to Africa for the first time, bringing the world to Kenya’s coast under the theme “Our Ocean, Our Heritage, Our Future.” The conference provides a critical opportunity to increase investment and action in coastal wetlands, which are among the most valuable yet underfunded ecosystems.
The missing piece in ocean finance
Mangroves, seagrasses, and salt marshes are powerful natural climate solutions. Mangroves can store up to five times more carbon per area than tropical forests and capture carbon at rates up to three times faster. Seagrass meadows are estimated to be up to forty times for efficient at capturing organic carbon than terrestrial forests. They also protect coastlines from storms and erosion, support fisheries, improve water quality, sustain biodiversity, and underpin the livelihoods, food security and cultural heritage of millions of people.
Yet funding for their protection and restoration remains fragmented, short-term and far below what is needed. The Global Wetlands Outlook reports a massive underinvestment in wetlands overall, with a required annual investment of USD$275–550 billion needed to meet global biodiversity and restoration targets. While existing wetlands provide up to trillion in annual benefits, funding remains far below necessary levels. Funding for peatland and mangrove restoration alone faces a gap of $316 billion by 2050. SDG 14 (Life Below Water), which includes protection and restoration of marine ecosystems, remains the least funded of all Sustainable Development Goals.
Around the world, communities and governments are protecting and restoring mangroves and other coastal wetlands, but too many projects struggle to move from pilot initiatives to long-term, landscape scale implementation. A lot of investment is also needed to improve uptake and joint learning of best practice knowledge from experts and communities, mangrove-positive policies and coordination with existing partnerships for scaling up.
OOC11 offers an opportunity for governments, donors and investors to commit to increasing public and private finance for science-based, locally led wetland conservation and restoration initiatives.
Africa’s leadership
Africa is home to extensive mangrove forests, seagrass meadows and delta systems and is increasingly demonstrating leadership in nature-based solutions. West Africa alone contains the world’s third largest mangrove area and holds around 7% of global mangrove restoration potential, much of it in degraded and fragmented areas that are no longer in productive use.
Many African countries like Kenya, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Senegal, Gambia and Liberia have already integrated coastal ecosystems into climate or biodiversity strategies and governments, communities, scientists and civil society organisations are demonstrating how conservation and restoration can deliver tangible benefits for communities.
From dialogue to delivery
The science is clear, the policy commitments exist and the economic case is growing stronger. The challenge now is scaling finance and implementation. OOC11 can support this conversation on the following key priorities:
- Embedding more measurable and coherent coastal wetlands targets across national climate, biodiversity and wetlands plans and investment plans, to unlock public and private finance.
- Increasing dedicated funding for the protection, restoration and sustainable management of coastal wetlands.
- Strengthening the use of monitoring platforms, such as the Global Mangrove Watch to inform national targets and investments, identify and monitor priority areas for conservation and restoration and detect deforestation.
- Developing investment-ready project pipelines that connect commitments to implementation on the ground.
- Ensuring Indigenous Peoples and local communities are key partners and beneficiaries.
- Expanding technical assistance and capacity building to support science-based and locally led restoration and conservation approaches, and adopting available best practice guidelines on mangrove restoration in ministerial guidance.
- Elevating coastal wetlands as ocean-climate-biodiversity priority in the lead up to CBD COP17 in Armenia and UNFCCC COP31 in Turkey and beyond.
Ready-to-deliver investment opportunities
The good news is that many of the building blocks for scaling action for coastal and other wetlands already exist.
Wetlands International along with partners and national stakeholders have developed regional investment pathways for West Africa, Asia and the Americas, to mobilize the Mangrove Breakthrough along with investment-ready opportunities in Kenya, Indonesia, Mexico and Guinea-Bissau (for requesting access, see end of this post).
In Kenya, for example, the Proposition outlines a pathway to scale conservation, restoration and sustainable livelihoods across more than 60,000 hectares of mangrove landscapes. Alongside restoration activities, the proposition focuses on strengthening enabling conditions through policy development, capacity building, knowledge generation and long-term investment mobilisation. These propositions identify priority landscapes, implementation partners, governance arrangements and pathways to deliver measurable outcomes for climate, biodiversity and communities.
New programmes, such as the Kenya Mangrove Champions Initiative, are strengthening restoration quality and impact through local leadership and science-based approaches and practitioner training, building the skills, networks and knowledge needed to ensure restoration efforts deliver lasting ecological and community benefits across Kenya and beyond.
These examples demonstrate that the challenge is no longer a lack of solutions. The challenge is mobilizing finance in the enabling conditions and projects at the scale needed to implement them.
Where can you find Wetlands International at the Our Oceans Conference?
Join us at OOC11 in Mombasa and follow our coverage throughout the conference and explore our events, resources and policy recommendations for accelerating ocean-climate action at https://www.wetlands.org/event/our-oceans-11/.
Mangrove Breakthrough Country Propositions
To request access to the Mobilizing the Mangrove Breakthrough Country Propositions for Indonesia, Mexico and Guinea Bissau, please reach out to [email protected]. For the Country proposition for Kenya, please reach out to [email protected]
