By Hadeer Elhadary
A nature-based community project in Egypt is helping fight climate change woes by planting mangroves on the Egyptian Red Sea Coast. As the climate change crisis escalates, biodiversity loss has been experienced hence the need for nature-based solutions.
The Mangrove Ecosystem Restoration Model (MERS) project is one such. The project is implemented by the Center of Applied Research on the Environment and Sustainability (CARES), The American University in Cairo, and is funded through HSBC bank, through the Climate Solutions Partnership.
They are working with the community using nature-based solutions to fight climate change impacts.
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) says that restoration and protection of mangroves is critical in combating climate change through carbon sequestration. They are carbon-rich ecosystems on the planet, restoring on average 1000 tonnes of carbon per hectare in their biomass and soils.
What is MERS? Why is it important?
“MERS is a nature-based solution to climate change. The MERS project aims to adopt a nature-based solution to address the challenges of climate change and enhance the environmental, social, and economic resilience of the most vulnerable local communities by restoring and rehabilitating the mangrove ecosystem in Egypt”. Dr. Yasmine Abdel-Maksoud, Senior Technical Manager, Cares -MERS project manager said.
According to Dr. Yasmine, mangrove ecosystems are precious as they are one of Earth’s most productive and biologically diverse wetland ecosystems. Also, they guard the coasts against coastal storms and protect coastal areas from bank erosion from sea tides and sea storms.
In the same context, a paper released by the project on 13 May 2024, and published in the International Journal of Environmental Science and Technology, analyzed mangrove distribution along the Egyptian Red Sea coast and found an increase in mangrove area by 4.5 hectares (2% annual growth) from 2003 to 2022. However, the study also revealed a decrease in mangrove cover in 24% of the area, particularly around Halayeb, likely due to environmental and human pressures.
Further, Dr. Yasmine notes that the most significant value of the mangrove ecosystem is that it acts as a nursery for fish and other species essential to the livelihoods of coastal residents and the rest of humanity that depend on bluewater food.
“Mangroves serve as a source and a repository for nutrients and sediments for other coastal marine habitats, such as seagrass beds and coral reefs, and have remarkable capacities for sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, which is why it is one of the natural solutions aiding in the climate change challenge.”
The plan of the project
“The project commenced in 2021 and is scheduled to be completed by 2026. It began the plantation process in two sites “Safaga and Hamata”, and its duration is five years”. She added.
“The model will be optimized to suit the Egyptian context and allow for easy scalability to target barriers or barriers to scaling up nature-based solutions to climate change such as lack of financing, political will, and technical skills and capacities.”
Dr. Yasmine confirmed that the project has planted 15,000 seedlings of the two mangrove species “Avicennia marina and Rhizophora mucronate ”in three years.
In addition, it held training sessions for the community of Hamata. They have also organized literacy training for the Hamata community and hosted several community awareness sessions, such as Safaga Mangroves Beach Clean-up, and the Hamata School Awareness session.
Women empowerment
The project has greatly helped in empowering women and providing them with job opportunities.
Najat Muhammad, 21 years old is one of the beneficiaries.
She got a job opportunity in a mangrove restoration project and received a daily payment. The money she was paid made her feel that she was playing an important role in supporting her community.
Similarly, Karima Saad aged 18, loved working in agriculture because of the project. Both women benefited at the same time from the “literacy training sessions” offered by the project in addition to its other activities.
”I have benefited from this project on several levels, first I have boosted my economic well-being after being paid for working in the agriculture sector, I have also received additional payment for teaching women and girls within the literacy training.” said Amna Eid aged 26.
“The project’s interest in teaching reading and writing to residents in the region is because working in eco-tourism, which the project aims to support, will require knowledge of reading and pronunciation. At the same time, the work during the project faces some challenges, such as choosing the right places for the plantation to avoid any loss of progress in the future by coastal development for example, and the news to raise the awareness of the local communities about the importance of mangroves. Dr. Yasmine added.
How does the project plant mangrove seedlings?
According to Eng Abdallah ElKot, Agriculture Engineer in Mers Project, the mangrove plantation is divided into two phases, the “Seeds phase”, where seeds are collected during the flowering time, which is in March, and April, then, it is planted into polybags inside nurseries to increase the germination of the seeds.
The second is the “Seedlings phase” where after one year, the seeds are developed into seedlings which are transplanted in the tidal zone of the seashore.
“There are some challenges, sometimes, when the nurseries are far from the plantation plot, the seedling transportation is hectic. Also, we need to check the quality of the seeds and choose the appropriate dates for the plantation to avoid tides as it makes the plantation process harder”. said ElKot.
“We need about 20 years to see significant results. On the other hand, the project aims to plant 50,000 seedlings of mangroves and to create a first line of defense for the Red Sea coast with mangroves.”
Eng. Nihad Mahmoud, MERS Project Officer confirms how the project targets to develop two eco-businesses around the mangroves to benefit the local community. The first one is the Mangrove Ecotourism Project, the project consists of boat tours, bird watching, and the Bedouin tent.
She added, “The team started the community training on the management of illiteracy, to help them manage the project and distribute the revenue equally among the community members. The ecotourism project will hire around 20 direct and indirect labour. They will all be from the local community.”
This story has been produced in partnership with InfoNile and with funding from JRS Biodiversity Foundation and IHE Delft’s Water and Development Partnership Programme. It’s a collaborative effort between the journalist Hadeer Elhadary and the scientist Dr. Yasmine Abdel-Maksoud.
