Challenges and Strategies for Sustainable Mangrove Management in Indonesia: A Review

Abstract

Mangroves are an important ecosystem that provides valuable social, economic, and environmental services. Indonesia has placed mangroves on its national priority agenda in an important effort to sustainably manage this ecosystem and achieve national climate commitments. However, mangrove management is faced with complex challenges encompassing social, ecological, and economic issues. In order to achieve the government’s commitments and targets regarding mangrove restoration and conservation, an in-depth study on and critical review of mangrove management in Indonesia was conducted herein. This work aimed to provide a comprehensive analysis of the challenges and strategic recommendations for sustainable mangrove management in Indonesia. SWOT analysis was carried out to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to mangrove management in Indonesia. To address these gaps, we reviewed the existing policies, current rehabilitation practices, environmental challenges, and research and technology implementations in the field. We found that strategies on mangrove ecosystem protection, such as improving the function and value of mangrove forests, integrating mangrove ecosystem management, strengthening political commitments and law enforcement, involving all stakeholders (especially coastal communities), and advancing research and innovations, are crucial for sustainable mangrove management and to support the national blue carbon agenda.

A systematic review of mangrove restoration studies in Southeast Asia: Challenges and opportunities for the United Nation’s Decade on Ecosystem Restoration

“…Aside from the measured biophysical variables, restoration outcomes should also be assessed on how it contributes to the well-being of the society that are using mangroves and the policy makers that govern mangroves (Bayraktarov et al, 2020;Arifanti et al, 2022b). These outcomes are then integrated to improve mangrove conservation and restoration policies (Lee et al, 2019;Friess et al, 2022;Gatt et al, 2022).…”

“…Aquaculture is considered as one of the main drivers of mangrove loss in the region (Richards and Friess, 2016;Gandhi and Jones, 2019), which has expanded about 2.5 times for the last 25 years (Luo et al, 2022). With changing policy discourse surrounding the utilization and value of mangroves, the massive clearing of mangroves for aquaculture from 1950s to 1980s (Primavera, 2000;Valiela et al, 2001) have transformed to mangrove reforestation since 2011 (Song et al, 2021;Arifanti et al, 2022b). However, a substantial area of abandoned, undeveloped and underutilized (AUU) ponds are still to be restored (Primavera et al, 2011;delos Santos et al, 2022).…”

“…The realigned policies will need to be "ambitious" following science-based and evidence-based protocols (sensu Friess et al, 2022). Fortunately, the ASEAN is already available which could be tapped to facilitate the development of common mangrove policies across countries (Palis et al, 2014;Arifanti et al, 2022b).…”

Natural climate solutions in Indonesia: wetlands are the key to achieve Indonesia’s national climate commitment

“…The regions in Indonesia with the highest potential for the mangrove pathways are Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Sumatra, and Papua. a provincial basis, East Kalimantan had the highest annual deforestation and degradation rates over the last decade (Arifanti et al 2022a(Arifanti et al , 2022b.…”

Litterfall and Associated Macrozoobenthic of Restored Mangrove Forests in Abandoned Aquaculture Ponds

“…Large-scale monogeneric planting of Rhizophora spp. has been the dominant strategy for mangrove restoration in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia [27,89]. Instead of recovering the environmental condition of the damaged habitat, planting seedlings in dense formation is more favored, leading to the lack of habitat complexity and species diversity [27].…”