Mangroves, Avicennia Marina, City of Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Healthy natural coastal ecosystems, such as mangrove forests, saltwater marshlands and seagrass meadows provide a vast array of important co-benefits to coastal communities around the world, including throughout the Arabian Peninsula. These benefits include ecosystem services such as a rich cultural heritage; the protection of shorelines from storms; erosion or sea-level rise; food from fisheries; maintenance of water quality; and landscape beauty for recreation and ecotourism. In a “Blue Carbon” context these ecosystems also store and sequester potentially vast amounts of carbon in sediments and biomass.