One of the big pushes about restoration is restoring coastlines with carbon, you know, sequestering type habitats, but also habitats that will protect the shoreline will increase biodiversity and will have economic as well as environmental impacts for a long time. But all of those different reasons to restore a coastline, they don't always align and sometimes it gets in the way of actual proper restoration of a coastline. So we're going to talk about Thailand and we're going to talk about the budding mango restoration and some of the concerns that surround it with blue carbon, some private and public partnerships and where and how restoration is actually done. We're going to talk about that on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. Let's start the show. Hey everybody, welcome back to another exciting episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host Andrew Lewin and this is the podcast where you find out what's happening with the ocean, how you can speak up for the ocean and what you can do to live for a better ocean by taking action. This is where you find all things about the ocean and you can find out more information if you go to the website, speakupforblue.com or you can also and you can also sign up for our newsletter at speakupforblue.com/newsletter. You will get a newsletter sent to your inbox Monday to Friday that details the latest podcast episodes, the latest videos because this is a video podcast as well as some of the new news that's happening in and around the ocean and some new jobs that are available too if you're looking for a career. So lots of things to look for speakupforblue.com/newsletter and then if you just want the regular website with a number of different podcasts on it, go to speakupforblue.com. Let's talk about Thailand and I want you to just be a little patient, sit back and just listen to what I'm going to say for this episode because there's a lot to get through and there's a lot of things that we have to consider and I'm really glad this article was written by Carolyn Cowan from among a bay. And I'm going to link to the article in the show notes as well as the description if you're watching this on YouTube. It is a lot to know about restoration. There's a lot that goes into restoration and there's a lot of things that could be good and bad when it comes to restoration. Some of those are the outside pressures that come with, you know, trying to do better for the planet. We know we are in it right now for the planet, right? We are seeing a lot of problems. We have observed climate change on countless different fronts from droughts to wildfires to sea level rise to increase storm surges, more flooding, more rainfall, hotter ocean surfaces, like record breaking. And it doesn't look like it's going to stop anytime soon. Some of the things that we can do are restore habitats to decrease the effects of climate change and reduce climate change in greenhouse gases by sequestering more carbon. But what we can also do is protect the coastlines more just as they originally did when these coastlines were intact, right? They provided not only security from tsunamis or storm surges, but they provided biodiversity so that people can fish and people can live off of enjoy the fruits of the labor of having healthy mangroves and also just a stable ecosystem, right? Which again provides security, provides natural resources ability, and just makes it everything better. Like, let's be honest, it just makes everything better. So today we're going to be talking about Thailand's, you know, mangrove restoration projects and their plans and how it can benefit them. But how some of the some of the things that happen through restoration through different pressures and different, I guess, opportunities and projects have not been as fruitful as hoped. And so we're going to talk about that. But before we get into that, I want you to understand that restoration, one, is expensive. Protection is better. It's cheaper, it's longer lasting, and it's better. But no matter what you choose, protection, restoration, you always have to start somewhere. And even though we're going to be talking about some problems that are going on with these plans and with these projects over time, the strategy is the same. It's to continue to do things, continue to restore, continue to protect, right? Be able to find out the problems, adapt to those problems, and be able to manage those problems better in the future by just switching up the strategy, right? So none of these projects should be vilified. None of these projects should be saying, "Hey, you know what? We can't do this restoration because there's always these little problems here and there." No, these problems happen when you start to do action. And that's what we're talking about today is we're talking about action. And that's sort of what I want to focus on is the action. And so I want you to remember when I talk about a lot of these things and I identify some of the shortcomings of these plans that, you know what, Thailand's doing a great job. The people Thailand are doing a great job at forwarding this restoration. Okay, so there's a number of things that we need to consider when we're restoring. Some things are a little bit higher priority than others. But overall, there's still things that you can change and there's still things that you can manage. So this is a great article. I highly recommend that you take some time and read it. It's something that I always love from Hanga Bay. The author's put in so much detail and it's so great. And this article starts off with speaking to someone who is sort of the keeper of this education center and natural center. It's called the mangrove nature school in Bancu, a village roughly two hours drive south of Bangkok. And so in the summit songgroom province, I apologize if I'm not pronouncing this properly. I'm not very familiar with the pronunciation for a lot of these places here in Thailand. But, you know, so that there's a huge area of, well not huge I guess, but larger area of mangroves that are on this preserve. It's been preserved for over three decades. It's a 6.5 hectare or 15.8 acres of patch of mangrove forest that is next to this person's village. And so being able to have that, you have mud skippers, iridescent fiddler crabs, you know, that flip between the tangled roots of a pair of seven and a half meter or 25 foot mangrove trees as the tide lapse. Relentancy beneath the raised walkway. So you get a little bit of a description of what happens in there. And, you know, when you start to, when they start to look at this coastline, they start to see some reminder that there is, you know, some er, er, a roading of the coastline. That's rapidly eroding. In Thailand's Department of Marine and Coastal Resource Management estimates that parts of the Gulf of Thailand lose up to five meters or 16 feet of land to the sea level rise per year. We're going to talk about sea level rise as well as coastal development in a little bit. Now, I want to go a bit into the history of Thailand's mangrove areas and the sort of degradation that we've seen over that time because I think it's important to have sort of a knowledge of where they were, where they've been, and how it's going right now. So in 1961, there was estimate coverage that that was at 330 sorry, 352,000 hectares in 1961 and it dropped to 160,000 hectares by 1996. So that's a huge, huge drop. So in 1996, they realized, hey, hold on a second, we need to build up our mangroves because they provide a lot of services. So they provide, first of all, security. So when a tsunami comes through, the areas that have intact mangrove habitats dispel the energy, right, they basically dissipate that energy of waves that comes over the top and through the mangrove so that by the time it gets to some of the villages and towns that are beyond the mangrove areas, like that 50 meter swath that they like to keep in Thailand, then, you know, the energy is a lot less, the destruction is a lot less, lives are saved, and it's a lot better. So having an intact and healthy mangrove forest is good from a, it was great from a security standpoint, it's also great from a biodiversity standpoint. There's lots of fishing that can go on, it can feed local fishing villages for a lifetime and more in generations if you have that healthy area, right, plus you have a diversity, you get a lot of birds. Having biodiverse areas is meaning you have a stable coastline, meaning that, you know, when you have all these different animals that take part in sort of taking care of these habitats, you know, from making sure that invasive species get eaten and taken away, or that certain everything is all balanced and stable, then you start to have some good things happening there. So that's all good from there. So having a biodiverse area, healthy mangroves that can help with security is a huge, huge impact. Then there's also the carbon credits that you can get, that they're a carbon sink, so they sequester carbon by continuing to build and regrow and regenerate through mangroves, right, mangrove trees, they are a tree, and they tend to sequester four times the amount of up to four times, maybe even more of the regular trees that we normally talk about when we talk about blue carbon projects. So they are a blue carbon community, a habitat, and something that we need to focus on. We did talk, and I'll put the link in the show notes, recently with World Economic Forum about one of their projects to restore mangroves in a lot of different places in the tropics. And, you know, so that it's obviously a worldwide and global initiative to do this, but in Thailand, it's big. Now, 160,000 acres down to 160,000 acres in 1996, the response to that and the increase in planting these types of mangroves increased by 50%. By the time, I think it was 2000, and so here it is right here, or I guess right now, 2024 now has 248,400 hectares. So it's a 50% increase of mangrove cover, according to UNESCO figures, which is great. So the 50% coverage from 1996, that's big, and it's 46,400 of those acres are managed for conservation as national parks or wildlife sanctuaries. So that's a big bonus. So we are seeing an increase in the coverage. Now, here's the thing. We are seeing mass plantings happening, and this is a lot of private and public sort of partnerships that are happening where you will get companies who are saying, "Hey, you know what? We've planted a certain amount of trees, a certain amount of mangrove trees along this coastline, and we've done this and we've done that." And it's great, and you get the companies that are being part of restoring the coastline, protecting Thailand, protecting people along those coastlines and just the nature of it all, the biodiversity. That makes businesses feel good. It also shows that they're doing some good things, and it's good for their PR. And we've seen in the history of Thailand, you know, in the past, we've seen a lot of degradation and removal for building like shrimp farms and development stuff. And so now to see these coastlines being naturalized is a good thing, right? We're starting to see that. And companies that are partnering with the government to be able to put these programs and have permission to plant in certain areas is a benefit, right? So you'll see a sloth of in pictures that those companies putting together of these little mangrove shoots that are about, yay, big, you know, maybe a foot, foot and a half high, and they're being planted in rows and they're like, you know, planted together and so forth. And then all of a sudden, they forget about it. They stop posting about it. They've planted their stuff, they've done their thing, and they stop posting about it. Here's the one of the concerns that's coming through is where these trees are being planted, where these mangrove seedlings are being planted. They're not being planted in the right areas. They're being planted in areas that get washed over by the tide, and at the time for those seedlings, they get drowned. They can actually drown, and they can get destroyed. And so these shoots that you see will eventually die because they will die, they will drown. They won't get enough air, they won't get enough non coverage of ocean, and they will dissipate and they will get destroyed. So all that money that was put into, you know, grow the seedlings and create the seedlings and bring them over to certain areas, the time it takes and the team building it does for these companies and the feel good, all that work, all that effort, all that money, washed away with the ocean, literally washed away. So these efforts are not as good as that first preserve that we talked about at the beginning of this show. When I went through it, where it's like 6.4 hectares of mangrove forest that is planted carefully, is planted together so that the roots intertwine, so that they're stronger together, that are planted in specific areas where the ocean's not going to wash over them as they're growing, and not going to kill them, right? When we talk about restoration, this is why I talked about the beginning, is that there are certain places where you will restore, there are certain places where you won't restore, and it does not matter if there were mangroves that were there before. The fact that there's been a lack of mangroves for 10, 20, 30, 40 years could make that historic site not appropriate for planting mangroves anymore or for a mangrove habitat because it changes over time. If you don't have mangroves, you don't have the land because that gets eroded away from the water, from the ocean, and from the tides coming in and out, so you don't have that space, that's gone. The fact that sea levels rising in a lot of these island areas, and the fact that there is less of a stability because of lack of mangroves, can change in areas. So something that was historically a mangrove habitat 30 years ago, 40 years ago, even 10 years ago, may not be appropriate to be a mangrove habitat now and may need to be built up, which can take a lot more money and a lot more time to do. But just being, just saying, hey, we're just going to plant these areas because this company was going to pay for a lot of that, and they want to be a part of this, that may not be the best area. So there needs to be better coordination of planning and the sites that need to do this. Now, I'm a former GIS guy, I'm still a GIS guy, but I used to work in GIS, and a lot of times when we talked about restoration, we would look at suitable areas. We'd have a map of the area, whether it be a coastline, whether it be on land, it did a lot of different things. And we would look, okay, here are the attributes of an area that we're considering to restore, a number of areas that we're considering to restore. We would look at that attribute, and we'd look at, we'd basically do like a prediction model saying which areas would be the best, would have the best success rate of holding on to a mangrove for a longer period of time. So it's not just that you plant it, and a year later, all those seedlings are gone, it's, you plant it, and a year later they're still there. Another year later they're still there. Five years down the road, it's growing into a bigger mangrove area. Ten years down the road, all right, now we have an established area, we're starting to see more biodiversity of ocean animals that are there, and mangrove animals, land and, you know, we're starting to see like birds, coastal birds, and sea birds come out. We're starting to see like nursing areas, starting to develop nursery areas. These are really important, the longevity of that growth, and seeing that habitat evolve and build on, you know, the security of that area, and the stability of that area, is great to see, but you have to give it time, it's going to take time, you can't just plant for the sake of planting and not being able to come back a year later and seeing the fruits of your labor, the fruits of the funding that's been put into it, and the actual labor that's been put into it. So where you plant is a big thing, and so there needs to be a little bit better coordination and identification of candidate sites that are good to restore. So you're not just throwing away money for the sake of greenwashing, essentially, right, because these companies, although they may not want to greenwash, they want to see the success, they don't necessarily follow the success. So having programs where the companies can be in it for the long run, like in it to win it, really, to see that win and be able to report on that or be able to show that through social media or through, you know, talking to their clients or whatever business they're in, being able to show success could really further these projects more. And when you have mangroves that are established, when you have mangroves that have been around for a while and that provide that security, provide that biodiversity benefit, then you start to see the social impacts and the environmental impacts quite quickly. Right, and that is an important part of this area. The second problem that we've seen, and I told you to stay with me here, the second problem that we've seen is the fact that it's the same mangrove, the red mangroves that are being chosen to basically be planted. So now you have a monoculture of habitat of mangroves, and some of these areas did not have red mangroves in the first place. Right, some of these areas had different types of mangroves, but the thing is is that mangroves from a restoration practice is easier to grow, is faster to grow and faster to establish, no matter where it is within, say, in this case in Thailand. So the red mangrove can actually grow faster, stab itself faster. So there's a good and bad thing in this, and the good thing is that a lot of the times from the government perspective, they want to provide security in case the tsunami comes in. We don't know when tsunamis are going to come in. The 2004 Christmas tsunami was one of those situations where it impacted a huge swath of people in Southeast Asia, and it killed a lot of people, and if you didn't have mangroves in your area restored, you were in trouble. But if you did, you weren't in as much of trouble, and the damage wasn't as bad, and often places saving villages and towns and people. But here's the pulling and tugging of this, so push and pull of this, is the fact that when you are trying to restore for protection, you want to do it as fast as possible. The faster situation here is to have a monoculture of red mangroves to put up. This may not be the mangrove of the day, the may not be the mangrove that would do better in the soil, in the area that is being planted, but it does grow, and it's sort of more resilient than other species. So you're having this monoculture being built right off the bat and being planted and being established, but the good news is that you can start planting other species as that sort of forest, mangrove forest grows and is established. So the first thing is to get it up for security, the second thing is to prioritize for diversity of mangroves, because you never know, we've seen it here in Canada a lot of times, and in the states, once you have an invasive species come through and there's one species of tree that gets affected, it will destroy all those species. So you're not going to have forests that are, you know, a monoculture of certain species, because that species affected that entire forest is gone. So it's better to have diverse forests with different tree species, just like it would be for mangrove species, right? I don't know much about mangroves and invasive species, and I don't know if that's as prevalent as it is in forests here in Canada, but, you know, it can be pretty devastating. So if there is something like that, that's something you have to be careful of, biodiversity in any kind of situation is much better, whether it comes from nature, animals, or even people. So we should consider that more. Regardless, that is one of the downfalls of trying to build and create and establish a mangrove forest that is diverse, that is long lasting, and that can help. But when you're trying to protect for security, you want that 50 meter swath of mangrove forest, like from the coastline, that will help protect against any kind of tsunamis, right? So that's another one of those problems. Now the third and final sort of concern that we have is the fact that we're starting to see a lot of companies and a lot of governments start to jump on this blue carbon train. And the situation of blue carbon is really interesting. From a perspective of reestablishing blue carbon habitats, so you have mangroves, seagrasses, salt marshes, and so forth. These are areas that could sequester multiple times more carbon than regular plants and trees, right? So land plants and trees. So it's important to have these blue carbon habitats along the coastline. Now the problem is that they're along the coastline. And a lot of times the coastline has been altered in many places around the world so that it is, you know, good for coastal housing and residences or hotels and tourism or things like that. But you still need those habitats in there. Like I said, for security, they have multiple benefits, but the blue carbon benefit is that it can sequester more carbon, help us with reducing the amount of carbon dioxide that is in the atmosphere. So having more of those blue carbon habitats planted is better. But there's a bit of a greenwashing train, as there always is with a lot of private companies who are putting money into projects that may or may not be real in some cases, or they could be putting into projects where the location, just as I mentioned before, may not have been chosen right, but they can say, hey, we're doing stuff for carbon sequestration and we're establishing more blue carbon habitats, but they don't stay for a long time, right? And so there's a push to do this type of work, but again, location matters and trying to figure out which location is the best is a big thing. So having more blue carbon habitats will be better, but you have to be careful of the game of blue carbon. There's also carbon sequestration, which is like, do we sink plants and do we sink these seaweed type materials and aquatic plants that and coastal plants that could absorb way more carbon than land plants and trees, and we sink them into the ocean to bury that carbon? That has not been perfected by any means. And there are very few projects that are going on that I know of that are successful in establishing that. And it's still in its early stages of doing that. We don't know the effect of sinking seaweed on mass levels in specific areas, the effect that that will have on the deep sea, just like we don't know what the effect is on deep sea mining on the deep sea. We don't know the effect of sinking all the seaweed and what that's going to do in the future for our deep sea. So a lot of the carbon sequestration, blue carbon, you have to be careful, although this is a very big key word within the conservation community and the climate change community, we do have to be careful and make sure that we are doing it properly, and not just for the sake of putting it up on your letterhead, a blue carbon company or a company that supports blue carbon habitats, or even the UN or World Economic Forum or big organizations like that, international organizations, even small to medium size to large NGOs that are getting into this type of practice. They have to be careful that these programs are real and these programs are establishing long term blue carbon habitats, right? Because they're not just blue carbon habitats, they provide biodiversity, they provide security, these are some big to do habitats. So those are sort of the three problems that people have, especially in Thailand, when it comes to putting this forward. The other thing, there's one more, sorry I forgot to mention, has to do with when you have private and public partnerships, you have private companies who are buying up swaths of land, right? They have ownership in some cases over that land, and so the question comes is if they pay for planting mangroves in specific areas, does that area become theirs to own, right? Or does it go back to the people of Thailand? Does it go back to the local villages, the people who live there? Do they lose their rights on those lands? Obviously that's not what is wanted, that's not the outcome that's wanted. So people want to retain the ownership rights of their land, and they don't want to have it go to a company where they can just do whatever they want with it, and we know how companies are sometimes and many times, and that's something that can be very concerning. So that's sort of the final thing that happens. Now overall, planting is great, making sure that we have restoration location sites chosen for specific reasons of long term restoration and establishment of mangrove areas will be key to ensuring that these mangroves stick around for a long period of time. You can have social economic benefits as well as environmental benefits. We can reduce climate change, we can have more blue carbon habitats along our coastline, naturalize our coastlines more, especially in Thailand, and just have a better planet after that. A lot of work still needs to be done, but there are great people that are doing the work in Thailand and across the world, and I think it's really great. Now, I know in my audience here, there are people who are in the business of restoration, whether it be corals, whether it be mangroves, whether it be seagrasses, I would love to hear your stories. I would love to interview you on this podcast for your story. So if you have a project that you've been, that you've been working on, or you are someone who's been in this field for quite some time, I would love to hear from me, from you reach out to me on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. I would love to hear your story to be that. So that's at how to protect the ocean. And everybody else, I'd love to hear what you think of this story, what you think of restoration in general, and some of the key concerns that we went through here today, I'd love to hear your overall thoughts. You can leave comments on Spotify, on YouTube, in the comments section, or you can give me a shout out on our DM me on Instagram at how to protect the ocean. I want to thank you so much for having patience to listen. I know this has been quite an intuitive and long episode, we're almost at a half hour right now, but it's something that I want to go over for a long time. So thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of the how to protect the ocean podcast. I'm your host, Angela, and have a great day. We'll talk to you next time, and happy conservation.
