Ace News Desk – Protecting the ‘guardians’ of China’s coast with Recent environmental inspections to provinces including Guangdong and Guangxi in southern China flagged challenges with “inadequate” protection of mangroves.
In this issue, Carbon Brief examines what challenges China faces in protecting its mangrove forests.
The most recent set of China’s environmental inspections concluded at the end of September.
The inspections resulted in warnings for two of the provinces visited – Guangdong and Guangxi – on the need to preserve their mangrove forests.
Earlier inspections, dispatched by the Ministry of Ecology and Environment (MEE) in May, found that aquaculture ponds were discharging water with high levels of nitrogen and phosphorus into or near mangrove reserves.
They also reported that swathes of newly added mangroves died after being planted and that one aquaculture company was illegally occupying land in a reserve.
In response to the September inspections, Guangdong party secretary Huang Kunming said that the province must “advance rectification work with the utmost rigour and practicality”.
Back from the brink
Mangroves are native to many provinces spanning China’s eastern and southern coastline.
The largest share of these forests are found in the southern provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi.
Sometimes called the “guardians” of the coast, mangroves play a role in both mitigating and helping adapt to climate change.
Their dense networks of roots can protect coastlines from the impacts of floods and typhoons – both of which are made more likely by global warming.
When Typhoon Yagi hit China in 2024, the mangrove forests reduced wave height by 44-70%.
They are also highly effective carbon sinks, able to absorb four times as much carbon as tropical rainforests.
Intense deforestation saw China’s mangrove stocks fall by 60% from 1973 to 2000 to 18,700 hectares (ha).
But the forests have since partially recovered. A land-use survey conducted by the government found that, compared to 2000, mangrove forest area rose 44% to 31,700ha in 2025, reported China Daily.
Zhang Yimo is the priority project coordinator of WWF China’s sustainable blue economy programme.
He described China’s efforts to restore its mangrove forests as “tremendous”, pointing to significant financial investment, strong regulatory coordination and a policy toolkit that encouraged restoration.
One such policy is an action plan published in 2020, which set a target for establishing 9,050ha of new forests and restoring 9,750ha of existing forests.
Zhang told Carbon Brief that having these separate targets required local authorities to address “real problems” around restoration – such as aquaculture pollution and managing deserted ponds – instead of focusing on planting new forests.
The country exceeded its target of adding 9,050ha of new forests, according to a government announcement.
Figures for how many hectares of mangroves were restored between 2021-2025, however, are unavailable.
Tackling aquaculture
Aquaculture – particularly shrimp farming – remains one of the largest challenges for mangrove restoration.
The 2020 action plan called for the “orderly phase out” of aquaculture ponds in nature reserves.
Mangroves are no longer cut down for new aquaculture ponds in China, but pollution from already established ponds nearby is still a problem, Zhang told Carbon Brief. Water is often polluted by the use of fertilisers and antibiotics, which “brings threats to mangroves when adjacent”, he said.
Zhang pointed to the money needed to tackle this as a significant hurdle, as funds would be needed to both compensate pond owners and clear the ponds.
High costs and technical complexity also encourage authorities to use the same species of mangroves in afforestation programmes, which are more “vulnerable” than a more biodiverse ecosystem, he added.
Artificial planting of new mangroves has a low success rate, due to “inappropriate siting and unsuitable conditions, as well as a lack of post-plantation maintenance”, according to a comment article in the state-run China Daily by researchers from Beijing Normal Universityand Xiamen University.
Instead, they argued, converting fish ponds back into mangrove forests would be a “more effective way of restoring mangrove ecosystem functions”.
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