How Much Does Mangrove Restoration Cost?
New global maps show where restoring mangroves has lowest cost, highest impact
July 11, 2025. Mangroves are an environmental Swiss Army Knife—they do it all. They protect coastal communities from storms and sea-level rise, take large amounts of carbon out of the atmosphere, protect biodiversity, and serve as nurseries and breeding grounds for ocean fisheries. Since 1980 around 40% of global mangroves have been converted to shrimp farms, tourist sites, and urban areas, alongside other coastal development. Fortunately, mangrove loss has slowed in recent years and interest in restoring mangroves is now booming.
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How much does mangrove restoration cost? Until recently only crude global averages were available. But now, in a new study published in One Earth, my colleagues and I have:
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analyzed what factors make mangrove restoration cheaper or more expensive;
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estimated the cost of achieving global mangrove restoration goals; and
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mapped what it would cost to restore mangroves anywhere on Earth.
Here’s what we found, and how it’s useful.
Spatial variation for spatial prioritization. On average, restoring mangroves costs $9,739 per hectare globally, with a median cost of $2,099 per hectare. But there’s a lot of variation. Restoring mangroves costs less for larger and newer projects, in aquaculture ponds, and in deltas. Conversely, restoring mangroves costs more in richer countries, at eroded sites, and on open coasts. Costs are lowest in countries like Myanmar, Liberia, and Cameroon, on average, and highest in Qatar and Cayman Islands (see the table of country-by-country results). The countries with the greatest potential area for low-cost restoration are Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Myanmar, and India. Anticipating where mangrove restoration will be cheapest can help restoration programs choose sites to get the best value for their investment.
Global costs for global goals. Restoring 1.1 million hectares of mangroves worldwide (that is, all areas where mangroves have been cleared since 1996 that are non-urban) would remove 930 million tons of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere over 40 years, and cost $10.7 billion in 2022 international dollars. This only considers implementation cost—that is, costs associated with planting trees and keeping them alive. It doesn’t include acquiring land, which could bump up costs to around $25.8 billion.
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These figures are useful for understanding the scale of resources needed to support initiatives such as the UN Decade on Ecosystem Restoration, Bonn Challenge, Global Mangrove Alliance, Mangrove Breakthrough, Trillion Trees, and national commitments to the Paris Climate Agreement and Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. Compared to terrestrial reforestation, mangroves offer a much smaller area for restoration at a given cost. However, mangroves compare favorably to terrestrial reforestation on a carbon-per-hectare basis.
Site-level costs for site-level decisions. At 95% of sites, mangrove restoration would cost less than $50/tCO2—a conservative estimate of the social cost of carbon pollution. After factoring in the cost of acquiring land, restoration still costs less than the social cost of carbon at 85% of sites. This means nearly all mangrove restoration passes a cost-benefit test based on climate values alone. Adding in values for coastal protection, fisheries, climate adaptation, and so forth would boost this further. However, the challenge is turning diffuse global values into tangible local income, e.g. through markets for “blue carbon.
Resources:
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Ungated pdf
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Figure 1. Global maps of restoration cost, carbon abatement potential, and abatement across potential global mangrove restoration sites. (A) Restoration cost ($ ha−1), (B) carbon abatement potential (tCO2 ha−1), and (C) abatement cost ($ tCO2−1). Data were summarized to 1° cells using the area-weighted mean across areas of potential mangrove restoration in each cell.
Methods: We collected information from 255 mangrove restoration projects in 25 countries on implementation costs and project attributes such as site condition and geomorphic class. Because most projects did not report a geocoded location, we could not factor in location-specific variables, nor rate of restoration success. We then used multiple regression analysis to model how project attributes affected costs. We extrapolated this model spatially to predict restoration costs for all areas on Earth where mangroves have been lost since 1996 (excluding urban areas) (Figure 1a). We combined this map with data on potential carbon sequestration (Figure 1b) to estimate where mangrove restoration would have the greatest climate impact at the lowest cost (Figure c).
