Myanmar’s overlooked moon forests are key to coastal resilience

I first entered a mangrove forest as a young forest ranger working in Myanmar’s Ayeyarwady Delta in 1989. I have been learning from the unique ecosystems at the boundary of land and sea ever since. Over the years, I have witnessed rapid deforestation of mangrove forests, but I have also been inspired by community-led restoration. When I think of mangroves today, I don’t just see trees. I see protection, livelihoods and coastal resilience.

Mangroves are not ordinary forests. While terrestrial forests follow the rhythm of the sun, mangroves are ruled by the moon. Its gravitational pull dictates the daily tides that alternately flood and drain the forests. That is why we call them “moon forests”.

The benefits of mangrove forests reach far beyond their boundaries. But many decision-makers, private companies and even foresters still do not grasp this. They have overlooked mangroves because unlike terrestrial forests, mangroves do not supply valuable timber.

The truth is that mangroves have a range of important values, both tangible and intangible. They support rich biodiversity, underpin food security, help us to fight climate change and protect coastal communities from storms and rising seas.

Their benefits are wide-ranging and often overlooked

In 2008, Cyclone Nargis delivered an important lesson. Villages with intact mangroves suffered fewer deaths and less destruction than those without. One man told me he had been in a dense mangrove forest during the storm and was unaware of the cyclone’s wrath until he emerged to see the devastation. That is the kind of shield these forests can provide.

Our mangrove forests are also crucial for food security. They are nurseries for many species of fish, crabs and shrimp that breed, spawn and shelter around the bases of the partly submerged trees. These species depend on healthy mangrove ecosystems. That means that both local fishing communities and offshore commercial fleets do, too. When I say “no mangroves, no fish”, I am not exaggerating.

Mangroves also affect food security in a less obvious way, by limiting the intrusion of saltwater into farmers’ fields. In areas where mangroves have been cut down, more salt is reaching rice fields, reducing yields and forcing farmers to move inland. This problem is growing more acute as the sea level rises due to global warming. But mangroves have a crucial role to play here too. They store four to five times more carbon per hectare than terrestrial forests, and in some places as much as 10 times more.

Yet despite all this, our mangroves continue to disappear.

What drives rapid loss

Myanmar once hosted the most extensive mangrove forests in mainland Southeast Asia, particularly in the Ayeyarwady Delta and the Tanintharyi Region. But today only a fraction remains. In the Ayeyarwady Delta, mangrove cover declined by 64.2 percent between 1978 and 2011, and the loss has continued since.

Why? Over decades, people have cleared large areas of mangroves to cultivate crops such as rice or to farm shrimp. But the biggest driver of mangrove loss today is energy poverty. Most rural families rely on firewood and charcoal for cooking, and mangrove wood is among the most accessible.

People are not destroying forests out of ignorance. They are doing it to survive. Without affordable, clean alternatives for daily energy needs, deforestation will continue. The solution is not just better enforcement, it is better systems — clean energy access, efficient cookstoves and policies that reward protection and restoration rather than extraction.

Still, there is hope

Most mangrove restoration in Myanmar is state-managed. But it often fails because, after the replanting, nobody remains to take care of the regenerating mangrove forests. Maintenance is key. Local people see this to be the responsibility of the state, but the state has moved on to plant mangroves elsewhere.

There is a better way. I have seen the power of local people as stewards of the forest. In the Ayeyarwady Delta, communities with legal rights through Myanmar’s community forestry programme are restoring mangroves and protecting biodiversity. They are also earning by selling mangrove products such as fish, mud crabs and honey. The 30-year tenure rights that community forestry provides gives people the security they need to invest in continuous care for their mangroves.

One of the places where I have seen how this is working is Wakon, a village in the Pyapon Township of Ayeyarwady. After community forest members restored mangroves, wild bee species returned, and the diversity and abundance of fish increased. The villagers can catch more for home consumption and can sell any surplus in their village or local towns. The chairperson of the community forest user group there estimated that the group’s 60 member households earned 80 million kyat (around 17,777 USD*) from their community forest in one year.

Challenges to overcome

Yet community forestry faces major barriers. Forest areas available for community use are often far from villages and inaccessible to the poorest households, especially landless labourers who survive day-to-day. Another challenge is that it takes a long time for new applications for community forests to be approved. Unless these challenges are resolved, Myanmar will fall short of its goal to allocate one million hectares to community forestry by 2031. As of 2023, we had achieved only 46 percent of that target.

We also need a regulatory framework for carbon trade. Right now, Myanmar has no clear rules on how communities can access and benefit from carbon markets. Without legal clarity, they cannot earn from the carbon their forests store. This is a missed opportunity to incentivise mangrove protection and restoration, while improving rural livelihoods.

And we must change the way mangroves are perceived. When I studied forestry in the early 1980s, I had just three hours of lectures on mangroves during my six years at university. Today, foresters in Myanmar know so much more, but they still focus on how to plant and manage valuable timber species like teak and see mangroves as sources only of ‘minor’ forest products.

Five necessary actions

There is even less awareness among policymakers and private companies. We need them to understand just how important these ecosystems are – to food security, livelihoods, biodiversity, climate action and coastal resilience.

Mangroves are complex, beautiful and indispensable. They require a cross-sectoral approach where the fisheries sector pays attention to the mangroves that sustain it, where energy policy reduces demand for firewood and charcoal, and where climate finance reaches the people who conserve and restore mangrove forests.

To protect our mangroves and the communities that depend on them, we must:

• recognize mangroves as vital ecosystems, not minor forests
• remove barriers to community forestry and access to land
• establish a clear legal framework for carbon markets
• invest in clean energy alternatives to reduce charcoal and firewood dependence
• coordinate across sectors, especially among forestry, fisheries, energy and climate policy.

If we do not act now, we will lose not only trees, but everything tied to them – fisheries, food security, storm resilience and coastal communities themselves. But if we do act with knowledge, coordination, investment and the support of local people, then Myanmar’s mangroves can recover. I have seen it happen in individual community forests, and I believe it can happen again at scale.

* Note: Myanmar has both official and informal exchange rates. This estimate uses the local market rate to reflect actual purchasing power.

Maung Maung Than is director of RECOFTC Myanmar.