BANGKOK, Thailand — Standing on a coastal boardwalk overlooking the upper Gulf of Thailand, Wisut Leksomboon points to two mature mangrove trees whose branches intertwine like lovers’ limbs.

“We found that by planting two seedlings close together, they can offer each other support as they grow. These trees are about 30 years old,” Wisut tells Mongabay during a visit to the Mangrove Nature School in Bang Kaew, a village roughly two hours’ drive south of Bangkok in Samut Songkhram province. As a founder of the eco-school and a local leader, Wisut has worked for more than three decades to preserve a 6.4-hectare (15.8-acre) patch of mangrove forest next to his village.

Mudskippers and iridescent fiddler crabs flit between the tangled roots of the pair of 7.5-meter (25-foot) mangrove trees as the tide laps relentlessly beneath the raised walkway — a reminder that this section of coastline is rapidly eroding. Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources (DMCR) estimates that some parts of the Gulf of Thailand lose up to 5 m (16 ft) of land to sea level rise per year.

The erosion is a pressing issue in Bang Kaew, where 80% of residents rely on inshore fishing, salt panning, and aquaculture — livelihoods jeopardized by coastal land loss. Concerned about their future, Wisut and local activists initiated a mangrove conservation project in 2008 that culminated in the construction of 5 kilometers (3 miles) of bamboo fencing along the coastline to ease the impact of waves and trap mud, creating a more suitable environment for mangroves to regenerate naturally.

Their efforts are paying off. Not only has valuable coastal land been protected from storm surges, but wildlife is recovering. The mangrove visitor center next to the boardwalk showcases the vibrant wildlife that now thrives in the area: otters, kingfishers, crab-eating macaques, Irrawaddy dolphins, and all manner of shellfish and invertebrates.

Residents have also learnt to appreciate the mangroves on a deeper level, Wisut says.

“Now the villagers know that if there is a full mangrove forest, their livelihoods will be more sustainable from resources of shrimp, shellfish, crabs and fish,” he says. About a dozen families earn a living from harvesting the oysters that live among the mangrove roots, he says, just one example of how mangrove-derived resources have helped to reduce overall household debt levels in the village.

Over time, the successful restoration efforts garnered the attention of public and private sector groups looking to get involved in coastal reforestation in the Gulf of Thailand. As momentum grew, a 0.8-hectare (2-acre) mangrove restoration area was established at Bang Kaew in 2016. Now, the site is regularly visited by corporate tree-planting initiatives coordinated through the DMCR.

The results of this state-led and corporate-funded approach, however, stand in stark contrast to the community-led efforts. A short walk farther along the boardwalk brings the outcome of repeated tree-planting initiatives into view. Row upon row of spindly, dead mangrove seedlings stretch toward the horizon. A glossy, logo-adorned sign stands proudly on the walkway, announcing that 1,000 trees were planted by a local firm in April 2023; all but one of them are now dead.

The reason for the high rates of seedling mortality is tidal inundation, according to Siriporn Sriaram, managing director of Thailand-based nonprofit Blue Renaissance, who has worked on mangrove conservation for more than two decades. The land that the seedlings were planted on is low-lying and flooded with each incoming tide. In other words, the seedlings never stood a chance; they were simply planted in the wrong place.

Despite the disappointing tree-planting results, Wisut says he appreciates his relationships with outside entities like the DMCR and private companies, especially when people who visit to plant trees also help to clean up the vast quantities of trash that relentlessly wash in from the sea, choking the mangrove roots.

For Wisut, public engagement with mangrove conservation in any form is ultimately a good thing. But lately, he has more pressing concerns. Parts of the restored mangrove area have succumbed to land encroachment from nearby private landowners. Settling the disputes is fraught with complex governance challenges that remain unresolved, he says.

Beyond mass tree-planting

The vista of dead seedlings at Bang Kaew underscores the shortcomings of state-led restoration methods in Thailand and the need for reformed approaches, according to Siriporn.

The government agencies responsible for large-scale restoration efforts in Thailand need to stretch their focus beyond just planting trees, she says. “At what point do we allow one thousand people to make the same mistake [by mass planting seedlings]? There’s a need for us to review the approach that Thailand has been following.”

The greatest barrier to change, according to many sources Mongabay spoke to, is an oversimplified view of mangroves as a means of achieving carbon credits or green credentials. This leads to an overbearing focus on numbers of trees planted, rather than long-term biodiversity, ecosystem or community-level gains.

“Mangroves are not just about carbon credits; we have to also include the element of biodiversity when we restore them,” Siriporn tells Mongabay. “We should also be focusing on elevating livelihoods, helping people earn an income from mangroves and improving the experience for people visiting coastal areas, promoting them through sustainable tourism.”

From catastrophic destruction to rejuvenation

As important wildlife habitats and carbon storage powerhouses, mangroves play vital roles in helping tropical countries meet their global commitments on biodiversity conservation and climate change.

The potential for offsetting emissions through “blue carbon” in particular has stoked both government and private sector interest in mangrove restoration projects.

In Thailand, state-led mangrove restoration efforts began in earnest during the 1990s, following decades of catastrophic habitat destruction due to a combination of development pressure and government policies that incentivized the expansion of shrimp farms and granted coastal concessions for charcoal production and tin mining. Mangrove coverage dropped from roughly 352,000 hectares in 1961 to less than 160,000 hectares by 1996 (870,000 to 395,400 acres).

The lack of a dedicated budget for conservation meant mangrove restoration approaches leaned heavily on private sector funding and on cheap mass-grown seedlings. This led to restoration practices focused on mass plantings, often of just one species of tree, on any available stretch of coastal land, whether suitable for mangrove growth or not. This method is reflected across many parts of Southeast Asia, and has long come under fire from academics and conservation groups who have demonstrated through multiple studies that such practices typically fail more than they succeed.

A major driver of such failures is that the decisions on where and how to plant are often influenced by funders’ corporate social responsibility targets, such as the number of trees planted, rather than the achievement of long-term social or environmental gains.

This approach can result in repeated unsuccessful planting events at unsuitable but photogenic sites, according to Benjamin Thompson, an environmental economist at Monash University in Australia, whose 2018 study evaluated state-led mangrove restoration efforts in Thailand. A photo of a bare and seemingly barren mudflat prior to a planting event contrasts spectacularly with the “after” image of the same site planted with thousands of little green seedlings, he says.

“Everybody from the environment minister to the tree-planting participants and community partners are delighted following these events,” Thompson said, “but over the coming weeks, the tide washes in [over the planted area] and the majority of the mangroves drown because they’ve been planted in the wrong place.”

Planting on mudflats also disrupts vital coastal ecosystems. Far from the inert brown wasteland they might seem at first sight, mudflats are “teeming” with life, says Petch Manopawitr, president of the Bird Conservation Society of Thailand (BCST), the Thai affiliate of BirdLife International.

“Invertebrates like sea worms and mud-dwelling organisms provide an ideal food source for a diverse array of shorebirds, especially many globally threatened migratory species [such as the] spoon-billed sandpiper and Nordmann’s greenshank,” Petch tells Mongabay. “Vast areas of mudflat are not suitable for mangrove planting.”

Mangrove specialists have also criticized the practice of planting vast monocultures of Rhizophora mucronata, commonly known as red mangrove. An easy-to-plant and profusely rooting type of mangrove, R. mucronata was historically grown throughout Southeast Asia for charcoal production. Due to its legacy of commercial cultivation, it became the go-to species for mangrove restoration and is still widely available to reforestation programs via nurseries operated by Thailand’s forestry department.

However, relying on R. mucronata to the exclusion of a wider mix of native species will negatively impact ecosystem health over the long term, according to Aor Prachchai, a professor of silviculture at Kasetsart University in Bangkok. “Rhizophora monocultures [will] be less resilient to disturbances compared to more diverse species stands,” Pranchai says. “These monocultures are highly productive, making them suitable for both charcoal timber production and carbon credit projects, but they are not ideal for restoring the original mangrove ecosystem.”

Pinsak Suraswadi, director-general of the DMCR, the government agency responsible for Thailand’s mangrove conservation and restoration efforts, acknowledges that some mangrove restoration techniques deployed by his office, such as mass planting a limited number of species, are outdated. However, he says biodiversity isn’t the agency’s only concern. Planting, he says, is often the only way to maintain a green belt of trees along populated coastlines.

“Of course we want biodiversity, but sometimes we have to do things in steps and we’ve learnt from tsunamis in the past that even a 50-meter [165-foot] green belt of trees can help to protect people from impacts,” Pinsak tells Mongabay. “So we have to start with types of species that we know will grow well, then [once they are established], we can plant more species.”

Despite the ecological shortcomings of Thailand’s historical approach to mangrove restoration, Pinsak says there’s been tangible progress from large-scale planting. Thailand’s mangrove cover has increased by 10-15% over the past decade, he says, an increase he attributes to active tree planting by communities and corporate CSR programs.

Indeed, the government’s decision to stop allocating coastal concessions in the late 1990s combined with various tree-planting efforts and community-led conservation initiatives have effectively halted Thailand’s mangrove trajectory of decline. Thailand now has 248,400 hectares (613,800 acres) of mangrove cover, according to UNESCO figures; that’s roughly equivalent to a 50% increase since 1996. Of this, 46,400 hectares (114,700 acres) are managed for conservation as national parks or wildlife sanctuaries.

Besides helping to boost mangrove coverage, tree-planting initiatives are also an opportunity to educate the public about marine conservation and environmental pollution. “Sometimes, we know that the trees [people] plant are going to die,” Pinsak says. “But we still let them plant. In the time that they’re planting, we can teach them a lot [about mangroves] and we also ask them to do other things like collecting rubbish along the coastline.”

Toward more ecological methods

Given the rising popularity of mangrove restoration, education efforts need to go beyond just picking up trash. It’s vital to inform corporate funders, communities and government agencies on best practices to avoid repeating the same mass tree-planting failures of the past, says Siriporn of Blue Renaissance. Her organization is guiding a new collaborative initiative called the Thailand Mangrove Alliance (TMA), whose key message is that mangrove rehabilitation needs to be a long-term endeavor involving multiyear budgeting and monitoring.

Established in 2024, the mangrove alliance is a way in which the DMCR and partner organizations like Siriporn’s are engaging with communities and businesses in Thailand’s 24 coastal provinces to help preserve and rehabilitate mangroves. More than 90 organizations have so far joined the alliance, with the overarching goal of bringing 30% of Thailand’s mangroves under “effective management and recovery” by 2030.

“With the TMA, we’re trying to emphasize the element of biodiversity so that all members have the same shared vision of mangrove conservation,” Siriporn says. “It’s not just planting trees so that they grow fast and absorb carbon; it’s about a longer-term goal of giving priority first to the conservation of the ecosystems and then to restoration. We’re also trying to promote natural regeneration as a viable approach.”

Natural regeneration is best stimulated by relandscaping the shoreline so that new seeds and seedlings don’t drown, thus giving them a more suitable environment in which to flourish. While this natural recovery process may take longer to generate tree cover compared to direct planting programs, proponents say that in the long run, it will result in better survival rates and more diverse, resilient forests.

“When you fix the hydrology, you don’t even have to plant since there’s so many mangrove seeds and propagules floating around, they’ll grow naturally when the substrate is suitable,” says Dan Friess, a professor of Earth and environmental sciences at Tulane University in the U.S.

Convincing communities and government agencies to adopt this approach, however, can be challenging. “Planting is cheap and easy, whereas fixing the water flows is hard, costs money, and takes time and planning,” Friess says. “It also doesn’t give a nice photo opportunity in the way that planting some seedlings does.”

Nonetheless, momentum is building in parts of Southeast Asia to incorporate natural regeneration into restoration approaches. In Indonesia, for example, Friess says nonprofits have successfully advocated to integrate more ecological and community-centered approaches into national mangrove reforestation policies.

Blue carbon beckons

Besides the Thailand Mangrove Alliance, the DMCR is also leveraging the allure of blue carbon to incentivize private investment in mangrove rehabilitation through a carbon credits initiative. Under the scheme, corporations will be able to access carbon credits by partnering with coastal communities to implement pre-agreed community forest management plans focused on conservation.

So far, 33 private companies and 94 communities have signed agreements with the DMCR to participate, bringing some 24,000 hectares (59,300 acres) of land under the carbon credits scheme. This includes existing community forests and illegally encroached land, such as abandoned shrimp ponds and oil palm plantations, reclaimed by the DMCR in recent years.

However, the initiative has faced backlash from environmental groups and community activists who say the scheme is an example of greenwashing and warn that involving private companies in the management of mangroves will effectively transform public forests into corporate lands. Such an eventuality could affect how communities traditionally use and access coastal resources, they say.

DMCR chief Pinsak says that despite the criticism, he intends to engage with more communities and companies to more than double the area managed under the scheme. Carbon credits are a reliable way to fund mangrove conservation while boosting ecological and economic returns, he says.

“We’re blamed for greenwashing and that the public forest will be turned into private forest. But the project is a way for the company to get the carbon credit, and then the social benefits go to the community,” Pinsak says.

Since the initiative is based around robust community forestry agreements, Pinsak says communities will retain their rights to access the coastal land and resources earmarked under each corporate-community partnership. “Whatever is in the [community forestry] agreement will stand,” he says, whether it be beekeeping, shellfish harvesting, or cultural and conservation education uses.

Experts Mongabay spoke to say that Thailand’s diversification of approaches to mangrove restoration are broadly a positive step. However, they caution that carbon credits initiatives must be well-planned and well-managed. Clarification of factors such as who owns the land (and therefore the carbon) managed under carbon agreements and who obtains the benefits from the sale of carbon credits are paramount.

Governance conflicts need attention

Back in Bang Kaew, Wisut points out several mangrove trees that mark an unhappy antithesis to the entwined and thriving pair we encountered earlier. Gnarled and drying roots lie collapsed along the shoreline where a private landowner has cleared a section of land abutting the mangrove forest.

The encroachment into the mangrove area the community worked so hard to restore is disheartening, Wisut says, but there’s little he can do to stop it. Thai land policies that claim higher tax rates for idle land mean this is not an isolated incident. Nevertheless, he hasn’t lost hope.

“Even though it is exhausting when areas of restored mangrove are cleared, we have to keep going since so many people get benefits from mangroves,” Wisut says. “I ask myself what can my generation do to pass on this positive legacy to the next. We have to keep going.”

Pinsak says the DMCR recognizes private encroachment as an issue that must be resolved, especially given some 36,800 hectares (90,900 acres) of coastal land containing mangroves are privately owned. Incentivizing mangrove protection on private land through tax law reforms will be a key step, he says.

Hemmed in by the rising sea on one side, and a private landowner staking their claim to lucrative coastal land on the other, the long-term survival of Bang Kaew’s narrowing strip of community mangrove forest looks doubtful.

Wisut’s predicament encapsulates the reality for many coastal communities in Thailand, who are struggling to protect rapidly eroding coastal resources and ecosystems they have stewarded for generations amid competing demands on ever-eroding coastal land.

Whether policymakers and conservation groups can come together through Thailand’s emerging mangrove-focused initiatives to improve the outcomes for both biodiversity and communities remains to be seen. However, as investor interest in mangrove restoration heats up in step with the planet, the challenges of sensitively governing conservation initiatives are ever more apparent.

Equitable sharing of benefits, integrating ecological expertise into restoration practices, and educating funders on the need for long-term commitments centered on sustainability of restored ecosystems and local livelihoods will be key.

Carolyn Cowan is a staff writer for Mongabay. Follow her on 𝕏, @CarolynCowan11.

Banner image: Mangrove forests line the coastline in Krabi province on Thailand’s Andaman Sea coast. Image by Carolyn Cowan/Mongabay.

Citations:

Kongkeaw, C., Kittitornkool, J., Vandergeest, P., & Kittiwatanawong, K. (2019). Explaining success in community based mangrove management: Four coastal communities along the Andaman Sea, Thailand. Ocean & Coastal Management, 178, 104822. doi:10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2019.104822

Bayraktarov, E., Saunders, M. I., Abdullah, S., Mills, M., Beher, J., Possingham, H. P., … Lovelock, C. E. (2016). The cost and feasibility of marine coastal restoration. Ecological Applications, 26(4), 1055-1074. doi:10.1890/15-1077

Thompson, B. S. (2018). The political ecology of mangrove forest restoration in Thailand: Institutional arrangements and power dynamics. Land Use Policy, 78, 503-514. doi:10.1016/j.landusepol.2018.07.016

See related story:

Beekeeping helps villagers tend coastal forests in Thai mangrove hotspot

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