If we don’t put a proper price on nature, we will carry on destroying it

What do mangroves and hire cars have in common?  We will come back to this. 

In the meantime, I am writing this while looking out over a beautiful grove of mangroves in Iloilo province in the Central Philippines.  They are magnificent, strong, and a source of huge pride for the local community, who planted them fifteen years ago with the help, advice and funding from us here at ZSL.  

We have been working to protect mangroves in the Philippines for almost two decades. In that time we have restored 9000 Ha of mangrove forest, trained over 6000 community leaders and officials, and planted a million mangrove trees.

As some of you may know from our celebration of them, mangroves are superheroes of the tree world. They sequester multiples more carbon than the average tree.  They protect coastal communities from storm surge. They help the ocean restock its fisheries. They are crucial to the diversity of ocean life – 70% of reef fish species depend on mangroves at some point in their life cycles.    

Which makes it all the more disturbing that mangroves are under threat across the world.   There is a long list of stressors on these ecosystems – deforestation for agriculture or development, pollution, the construction of dams and – most severe of all – climate change.  According to the first global mangrove assessment for the IUCN’s Red List of Ecosystems, published in May this year, half of the mangrove ecosystems assessed are at risk of collapse by 2050.   Just under a fifth are assessed as being Critically Endangered or Endangered, at a severe risk of collapse. 

However, mangroves can show resilience and respond well if pressures are lifted and active protection put in place. The Global Mangrove Assessment 2024, highlights that mangrove loss dropped between the decades of 2000-2010 and 2010-2020, and half the net loss was offset by range expansion of mangroves into areas from where they had been lost.

Many Governments around the world understand the need and potential for mangrove recovery.   As I write, the first global conference on conserving and restoring mangroves is going on in Abu Dhabi. The UAE, along with the UK and others, have made major international commitments to mangrove conservation and are investing in mangrove protection and restoration. The Philippine Government is taking small but crucial steps to return/restore abandoned fishponds [optional - in the hundreds/thousands of hectares] back to functioning mangroves. And the good news is that we know that mangrove ecosystems will recover if we create the right conditions for them to do so.  That means doing three things.

First, we need to build our mangrove work on the solid foundation of good science and best practice. The conference highlighted the strong alignment within the scientific community on best practice. The wrong species, planted in the wrong place in the wrong way and ignoring the proper hydrology will quickly die. That is why ZSL has been doing research and developing best practice on mangroves for so long, led by our extraordinary chief scientific adviser on mangroves, Dr Jurgenne Primavera. It is why so much of our work is training and spreading best practice.

Second, we need work to protect mangroves to be led by the local communities. The best guarantee of success in protecting and restoring mangroves is the buy-in of the communities who live alongside them. If those communities are invested in the health of the mangroves, see their own interests intertwined with the wellbeing of the mangroves, then they will be the best guardians that the mangroves can have. Conversely, if they feel that the mangroves are irrelevant to their own prosperity, or getting in the way of their ability to earn a living and look after their families, the mangroves stand little chance.

Third is the single most important and the hardest thing we can do for nature. That is to create an economic system that puts an appropriate value on nature. On one level, the ecosystem services that mangroves provide us with are priceless.  On another, they can be priced, not least by the cost of losing them. Mangroves are worth a huge amount economically in terms of carbon, fisheries, coastal resilience. And yet in most places, a businessman cutting them down to make way for a fishpond does not have to pay anything for their loss. And a village restoring mangroves do not get paid for the difference they are making to the collective good. 

This what economists call the ‘tragedy of the commons’ – when something is owned by everyone, no one is incentivised to look after it.   It is why we are collectively ploughing through nature across the world, despite knowing we will all be the poorer for doing so.

It’s the same reason why no one ever takes a hire car to the car wash. If the economic framework doesn’t incentivise us to look after shared goods, all the evidence is that we won’t do so, with rare and noble exceptions. 

But in the case of the mangroves, the consequences go beyond dirty cars. Our failure to put a proper price on nature is a market failure of planetary proportions, that threatens the very existence of humanity.

Until we create the right economic incentives, all organisations like ZSL can do is put sticking plasters on the damage. We will carry on doing so, because every mangrove saved is a win for nature.  But we know that we are swimming against the tide of the market, and will only succeed in our mission for nature when that tide is turned.