Mangroves cut across ecosystems, sectors, jurisdictions and governance regimes. While few countries have a specific mangrove law, many national and international regimes apply to or affect mangroves in some way.

The assessment includes a global review of literature and legal information on international and national law and policy, a desk assessment of mangrove-related legal instruments in India, Kenya and Mexico, and an in-depth evaluation of effectiveness of mangrove-related law in Costa Rica, Madagascar and Vietnam.

Despite a proliferation of legal instruments related to the environment, environmental challenges such as ecosystem degradation, climate change and species loss continue to accelerate. At local, national and global scales, environmental legal systems are not consistently achieving the goals for which they were designed.