Rice, palm oil bad for mangroves: Study

Mangrove forests are found along the coast in tropical countries and they can survive even in salty soil. Requiring very low oxygen, they are common in over 80 tropical countries. 

Environmental authors, quoting from the study said rice and oil plantations accounted for 38% of mangrove deforestation between 2000 and 2012, the research showed. As well as being important carbon sinks and rich in biodiversity, mangrove forests provide fuel and food for coastal communities. “Aquaculture has largely been held responsible for causing mangrove deforestation, particularly in countries like Thailand and the Philippines,” explained co-author Daniel Richards from the National University of Singapore. 

He told BBC News that a study of eight countries around the world between the 1970s and the early 2000s found that 54% of deforested mangroves were replaced with aquaculture ponds used for fish or shrimp/prawn production. 

“Our study found that aquaculture was still important but we were surprised that in South-East Asia between 2000 and 2012, just 30% of deforested mangroves were replaced with aquaculture. 

“The impact of other drivers, like rice and oil palm agriculture, was greater than we expected.” Dr Richards observed: “Almost 25,000 hectares of Myanmar’s mangroves were converted to rice paddy between 2000 and 2012.” He added that while there had been a few previous studies that had highlighted the role of oil palm production as a cause for mangrove loss, they had no idea of the scale of the deforestation. 

“Sixteen percent of all deforested mangroves in Southeast Asia were replaced with oil palm plantations during our study period,” he said. “We usually think of oil palm as an issue which affects tropical forests on land but our study shows that demand for oil palm is also driving deforestation in coastal mangrove forests.”