For drylands with low inherent levels of biological productivity, coping with climate change presents particular problems. The world’s drylands cover over 40 % of the global terrestrial area and house more than 2 billion inhabitants MEA, (2005). The world’s poorest people live in these areas and they will be hit hardest by the adverse effects of climate change. The effects will manifest themselves not through increased temperatures per se but rather via changes in hydrological cycles characterised by both increased droughts and paradoxically, increased risks of flooding.

At a meeting of world mangrove experts held last year in Australia, it was unanimously agreed that we face the prospect of a world deprived of the services offered by mangrove ecosystems, perhaps within the next 100 years. Mangrove forests once covered more than 200,000 km2 of sheltered tropical and subtropical coastlines.