A warming ocean threatens mangrove restoration targets and deepens global inequities in ecosystem service losses

Abstract

Global efforts to restore mangrove coverage face a growing but underexplored threat from a warming ocean, jeopardizing the future benefits mangroves provide. Using high-resolution global data across 1° grid cells, we assess how climatic and socioeconomic factors influence mangrove dynamics. We find that mangroves are depleted in lower-income regions, but eventually restored as income rises. Similarly, mangroves in cooler areas may benefit from warming temperatures up to a threshold beyond which damage occurs. Although increasing wealth alone could have led to substantial global mangrove recovery by 2100, warming sea surface temperatures stall this progress—erasing the gains that would have occurred under socioeconomic change alone. By the end of the century, under Shared Socioeconomic Pathway 5 and Representative Concentration Pathway 7.0 scenarios, mangrove areas could be 150 000 hectares smaller than a no climate change baseline. We estimate annual welfare losses from reduced cultural, provisioning, and regulating services to reach 28 billion USD by 2100. Regional disparities are pronounced: Asia bears 65% of losses, followed by the Middle East and Africa (19%), Latin America and the Caribbean (13%), and OECD countries (3%).