Realising the importance of mangroves after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, Malaysia, as well as its neighbouring countries, embarked on a national-scale initiative to plant and replant mangroves on its coasts, with the aim of mitigating the impact of future tsunamis.
Efforts to plant and replant mangroves have also gained traction among corporate and non-governmental organisations.
These efforts could also be linked with other targets like accounting biodiversity or carbon credits.
But the question remains, how successful and how significant have these scattered actions contributed to the reforesting of mangroves in the country?
This can never be answered when there is no proper coordination at either the federal or state level to oversee mangrove conservation efforts.
Being a national initiative, it is important for these efforts to be properly recorded, monitored, quantified and reported, as a means to measure and document the success, or failure, and for that matter, finding room for improvement.
At the state level, these efforts would have major significance, as land matters fall under state purview. The selection of sites, as well as the sustainability of these efforts, heavily rely on the status of the area to be rehabilitated, chiefly to ensure that they do not clash with other land-use plans.
These issues may be resolved easily if we have a comprehensive map on the status of intact and disturbed mangroves in the country. The proposed map should include information like areas that are potentially restorable based on scientific evidence, coupled with suggestions of interventions for government agencies, non-governmental organisations, local communities, and the public and private organisations.
Planting or replanting is not the only option in mangrove restoration. What's more important is ensuring the targeted area is conducive to natural recruitment and regeneration by rectifying its hydrology and other environmental conditions and parameters. Different localities and settings would require different interventions.
This comprehensive map will make it easier to locate nearby communities to help and ensure the success of a mangrove restoration project, which would require continuous monitoring to understand its progress.
This is particularly crucial as local communities are the first beneficiaries of a successful mangrove restoration project and, conversely, the first to be impacted by any coastal or oceanic catastrophy.
Uncoordinated mangrove planting in the past has resulted in wastages of money, time and energy. There were a lot of avoidable incidences and circumstances like planting mangroves outside their ecologically preferred tidal ranges.
Improper planning has also resulted in irresponsible planting in other habitats, such as beaches, mudflats, sand flats, seagrass beds, coral reefs and other types of coastal ecosystems.
It is important to be mindful that these ecological systems have their own roles to play and ecosystem services to perform and provide. They are also home to other organisms.
Planting mangroves in unsuitable places is akin to murder. Each mangrove propagule or seedling is a living thing at the beginning phase of a long life.
The youngling could naturally find a suitable place to take root and grow instead, as the species has evolved for over 70 million years to do so in the extreme coastal environment.
It is, therefore, important to undertake such activities with proper scientific advice.
As one of the greatest mangrove-holding nations in the world, Malaysia has a responsibility to show the best example in conserving mangroves.
The priority should be on identifying and protecting all mangrove forests, regardless of the land tenure or status. Restoring or rehabilitating disturbed mangroves comes next to complement the former.
It has been 20 years since the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami, let us take this time to reflect on our priorities regarding mangrove conservation.
* The writer is an associate professor at the Institute for Environment and Development (Lestari), Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia and a coordinator at The Malaysian Mangrove Research Alliance and Network