Wetlands, including peatlands, mangroves, swamps and seagrass, are home to 60% of the world’s population as well as endangered species like the Sumatran tiger and the orangutan. They provide food, medicine, timber, protect biodiversity and store more carbon than tropical forests.
And yet these ecosystems are largely ignored and among the least understood. Mangrove forests have been destroyed for shrimp farming and agricultural development, while peatlands have been drained for oil palm plantations and rice cultivation.
Restoring and sustainably managing wetlands will help mitigate the kind of destruction caused by the 2015 fires in Southeast Asia where smoke and haze resulted in $16 billion worth of damage to human health and landscapes.
To restore wetlands, CIFOR-ICRAF have developed a range of innovative solutions that help countries counter the effects of even severe degradation of peatlands and mangroves.
Stories of transformation
Regreening Niger with proven agroforestry techniques
Transformative storytelling for social change: Telling stories about restoration can help support other efforts to restore degraded land. As part of the ReGreening Africa project, the CIFOR-ICRAF team trained farmers in Kenya to tell their stories of restoration by video.
Living in harmony with peatlands
(Part 3)
The next steps in peatland restoration and the role of stakeholders and partners
Videos
Tools
Global Wetlands Map
Global wetlands map is an interactive web-based map that provides country and sub-national level wetland profiles as well as datasets to conduct analysis.
Knowledge
