THIS column has visited the subject of Mangroves and its relationship to Guyana in quite a few articles, and today, we revisit it. We do so because of the importance of Mangroves to Guyana in several ways and also because the Ministry of Agriculture last year established a Mangrove Information and Conservation Centre under the auspices of National Agricultural Research and Extension Institute (NAREI). This is the first such Centre established in the Caribbean and its importance was underlined when the responsibility of opening it was given to Prime Minister, Hon. Mark Phillips.

The Prime Minister pointed out that Mangroves were part of the country’s policy of using Guyana’s forests as carbon sinks since they absorb and store great quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere for the benefit of the world and, as such, reduce the effects of Climate Change which is the greatest environmental threat to the planet.

In addition to mitigating climate change and the environmental threat, mangroves, as part of the country’s forest system, have earned money through the sale of carbon credits with HESS Corporation, for example, paying $750 million. Formerly, the focus was almost wholly on the environmental impact of Mangroves; now that there is greater awareness of the financial value of Mangroves, more effort is devoted to their preservation.

Mangroves help to preserve wildlife biodiversity. Within the mangrove systems, various kinds of wildlife can flourish; in particular, they are valuable nurseries for fish of various kinds. They, therefore, provide a food resource for the coastal villages and employment for many people. They provide nesting places for many sea birds, and even small songbirds sometimes build their nests on the taller mangroves. Many people prefer mangrove honey, and sometimes coastal residents locate hives so their bees can visit the mangroves. Coastal residents have developed a close relationship with mangroves and regard them as a health-giving environment.

The greatest benefit mangroves afford to Guyana, a country whose coast is below sea level and where 90% of the population resides, is to save it from flooding and erosion by the sea. Whenever the sea comes into the land, it destroys farms, and the land becomes infertile with the sea salt. More importantly, it erodes the land and villagers have to retreat further inland, becoming poorer.

There are stories on East Coast Demerara of Dutch coffins floating onto shore, indicating that habitable and fertile land once extended several miles out to sea during the period the colony belonged to the Netherlands. Nowadays, coastal villagers have become more aware of the value of mangroves and increasingly realise that their well-being is linked with the preservation and extension of mangroves. This was not always so, as mangroves were cleared in the past to provide firewood or even construction material for huts.

Today, the Ministry of Agriculture and the State are fully committed to extending the cultivation of mangroves throughout the coastlands and, over the last three years, the budgetary allocations to this sector have increased by over 200% since it is realised that the combination of the man-made sea defences with the natural mangroves would give greater security to the population from flooding.

Additionally, engineers and environmentalists have always welcomed mangroves as ameliorating Climate Change and its deleterious effects.

The launching of the Mangrove Conservation and Information Centre will provide a management action network which will continue to educate the population on the importance of Mangroves and the necessity of preserving them, providing a research centre where knowledge of mangroves could be advanced and disseminated and seek to integrate them into the landscape so that their natural regeneration is regarded as a norm as is being done with the mangroves growing on the rising mud banks along parts of the Georgetown sea wall.

Mangroves are, therefore, a financial asset, a milieu for the maintenance of valuable biodiversity, an environmental factor helping to control climate change, and a resistance to flooding and erosion by the sea.