Exploitation and Conservation
Approximately 35% of mangrove area was lost during the last several decades of the 20th century (in countries for which sufficient data exist), which encompass about half of the area of mangroves. The United Nations Environment Program also estimated shrimp farming causes a quarter of the destruction of mangrove forests. Likewise, the 2010 update of the World Mangrove Atlas indicated a fifth of the world's mangrove ecosystems have been lost since 1980.
Grassroots efforts to save mangroves from development are becoming more popular as their benefits become more widely known. In the Bahamas, for example, active efforts to save mangroves are occurring on the islands of Bimini and Great Guana Cay. In Trinidad and Tobago as well, efforts are underway to protect a mangrove threatened by the construction of a steelmill and a port. In Thailand, community management has been effective in restoring damaged mangroves.
Mangroves have been reported to be able to help buffer against tsunami, cyclones, and other storms. One village in Tamil Nadu was protected from tsunami destruction - the villagers in Naluvedapathy planted 80,244 saplings to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. This created a kilometre-wide belt of trees of various varieties. When the tsunami struck, much of the land around the village was flooded, but the village itself suffered minimal damage.
Read more about this topic: Mangrove
Famous quotes containing the words exploitation and, exploitation and/or conservation:
“Exploitation and oppression is not a matter of race. It is the system, the apparatus of world-wide brigandage called imperialism, which made the Powers behave the way they did. I have no illusions on this score, nor do I believe that any Asian nation or African nation, in the same state of dominance, and with the same system of colonial profit-amassing and plunder, would have behaved otherwise.”
—Han Suyin (b. 1917)
“Communism is inequality, but not as property is. Property is exploitation of the weak by the strong. Communism is exploitation of the strong by the weak.”
—Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (1809–1865)
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)