Sometimes, progress means helping nature do what it does best. This seems to be the case for a once-barren 200-acre piece of land surrounded by lush mangrove forests in El Salvador. Mangrove forests provide a vast array of valuable ecosystem services and play a critical role in climate change mitigation and adaptation; they sequester carbon, […]
1 Million Trees: A Plant-a-Thon for World Environment Day
Scores of volunteers in communities across El Salvador today are mobilizing to plant over one million trees in 71 municipalities. This “Plantatón 2017” is a campaign by the Ministry of Environment to reforest areas of El Salvador in an effort to restore and protect life-giving watersheds. Our partners at the Mangrove Association are joining in […]
7 Reasons Mangroves Matter
Mangrove forests are incredibly important ecosystems. In a study from 2014, mangrove forests were found to provide ecosystem services (benefits to humans) valued at $194,000 per hectare annually. Today is International Mangrove Day and here are just a few reasons we should care about mangroves – and invest in protecting them: 1. Biodiversity. Home to […]
Empowered Women Protecting El Salvador’s Mangroves
A conversation with geographer Fiona Wilmot. In April I met up with Fiona Wilmot, a longtime friend and collaborator of EcoViva and the Mangrove Association. She presented a paper at the American Association of Geographers conference in San Francisco in the panel Addressing the Interior in Socio-ecological Systems: Affective Transformation and Intentional Acts of Biophysical Rehabilitation. […]
Salvadoran Communities to Coordinate Major Investment in Mangrove Conservation
$2.5 million destined for locally-led conservation initiatives in the bay The Fund for the Initiative of the Americas, FIAES, a leading environmental funder and conservation organization in El Salvador, announced last month it would be investing $16.6 million over the next five years in the protection of seven wetland areas and nature reserves across the […]