And although Mexico took steps to establish a climate action plan in 1998 and was one of the first developing countries to make voluntary commitments under the Paris Climate Accord, its commitment to the environment began to backslide in 2015, said Julia Carabias, a professor on the science faculty at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Mexico began to protect some of its mangroves only after the excessive tourism development of the 1980s. Tracts of mangroves on the country's southern Pacific coast also have been cleared to make room for shrimp farming, while oil exploration and drilling in shallow waters off the Gulf of Mexico threatens mangroves there, said Aburto. The region near Cancun lost most of its historic mangroves to highways and hotels starting in the 1980s. In Mexico, as in much of the world, the largest threat to mangroves is development. Food and Agriculture Organization.ДЇrom 2000 to 2016, the rate of loss declined as governments and environmental groups spotlighted the problem, but destruction continued - and about 2% of the world's remaining mangrove forests disappeared, according to NASA satellite imagery. Yet around the globe, mangroves are threatened.ДЇrom 1980 to 2005, 20% to 35% of the world's mangrove forests were lost, according to the U.N. They can bury around five times more carbon in the sediment than a tropical rain forest.вЂќ While the tropical trees only grow on less than 1% of the Earth's land, he said, вЂњon a per-hectare basis, mangroves are the ecosystem that sequesters the most carbon. вЂњMangroves represent a very important ecosystem to fight climate change,вЂќ said Octavio Aburto, a marine biologist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego, California. Other restorations are underway in Indonesia, which contains the world's largest tracts of mangrove habitat, Colombia and elsewhere. This mangrove restoration effort is similar to others around the globe, as scientists and community groups increasingly recognize the need to protect and bring back the forests to store carbon and buffer coastlines from climate-driven extreme weather, including more intense hurricanes and storm surges. вЂњThe happiest day is when our plants take,вЂќ said 41-year-old Keila VГЎzquez, leader of the women who now are paid $15 a day and take pride in putting their вЂњgrain of sandвЂќ into the planet's well-being. Then they placed 20-inch mangrove seedlings into mounds of mud held together by mesh, creating tiny islands about a yard (meter) square.

Under the sun, they chuckled, remembering the time they encountered a crocodile and barely managed to run away. Recently, after an intense rainy season, the women worked to finish the second part of the restoration process: planting young mangroves in a swamp near this port city. Men from Chelem, a fishing village of Progreso, turned down the job but a group of women took it on, believing they could accomplish a lot with little money.

To dig them was a hard work and paid only $4 a day. He told them the mangroves needed a network of interlaced canals where fresh and salt water would mingle. The first time they came to the swamp for seasonal restoration work was more than a decade ago with Jorge Alfredo Herrera, a researcher at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the Mexican Polytechnic Institute in Yucatan. Their work is supported by academics and donations to environmental groups, and government funds help train villagers to organize their efforts. Decades ago, mangroves lined these shores, but today there are only thin green bands of trees beside the sea, interrupted by urbanized areas and reddish segments killed by too much salt and by dead branches poking from the water.ДЄ few dozen fishermen and women villagers have made building on whatвЂ™s left of the mangroves part of their lives.

Advanced web shield is off