Safeguarding climate-resilient mangroves requires only a moderate increase in the global protected area

Alvise Dabalà; Christopher J Brown; Tom Van der Stocken; Christina A Buelow; David S Schoeman; Daniel C Dunn; Catherine E Lovelock; Farid Dahdouh-Guebas; Jason Flower; Sandra Neubert; Kristine Camille V Buenafe; Jason D Everett; Kris Jypson T Esturas; Anthony J Richardson

doi:10.1038/s41467-026-68877-4

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Safeguarding climate-resilient mangroves requires only a moderate increase in the global protected area

Journal article

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Safeguarding climate-resilient mangroves requires only a moderate increase in the global protected area

Alvise Dabalà, Christopher J Brown, Tom Van der Stocken, Christina A Buelow, David S Schoeman, Daniel C Dunn, Catherine E Lovelock, Farid Dahdouh-Guebas, Jason Flower, Sandra Neubert, …

Nature Communications, Vol.17(1), pp.1-11

2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-68877-4

PMCID: PMC12949150

PMID: 41593080

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Abstract

climate change

conservation biology

wetlands ecology

Climate change and anthropogenic activities threaten biodiversity and ecosystem services. Climate-smart conservation plans address these challenges by ensuring protection of some climate-resilient areas. However, integrating climate change in the design of conservation plans is often deemed too expensive, as it may require larger networks or protecting more costly sites from a conservation perspective. Using mangroves as a case study, we evaluate the efficiency of protecting mangroves in climate-smart versus climate-naïve reserve networks. We find that climate-smart conservation plans could provide sizable benefits (13.3%) for relatively moderate increases in protected area (+7.3%). Moreover, transboundary plans, involving cooperation among countries, require less area and protect more climate-resilient mangroves than nation-by-nation plans. Implementing these strategies would improve the current protected area network for mangroves, which currently has poor climate resilience. Our methodology could potentially be tested on other ecosystems, assuming sufficient information exists regarding their distribution, biodiversity, and resilience to climate change.

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Title: Safeguarding climate-resilient mangroves requires only a moderate increase in the global protected area
Authors: Alvise Dabalà (Corresponding Author) - The University of Queensland
Christopher J Brown - University of Tasmania
Tom Van der Stocken - Vrije Universiteit Brussel
Christina A Buelow - The University of Sydney
David S Schoeman - University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Daniel C Dunn - The University of Queensland
Catherine E Lovelock - The University of Queensland
Farid Dahdouh-Guebas - Zoological Society of London
Jason Flower - University of California, Santa Barbara
Sandra Neubert - The University of Queensland
Kristine Camille V Buenafe - The University of Queensland
Jason D Everett - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Kris Jypson T Esturas - Université Libre de Bruxelles
Anthony J Richardson - Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation
Publication details: Nature Communications, Vol.17(1), pp.1-11
Publisher: Nature Publishing Group
Date published: 2026
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-68877-4
ISSN: 2041-1723
PMID: 41593080; PMC12949150
Copyright note: This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
Data Availability: The datasets used in our study are publicly available online. See article text for details.
Grants: Predicting coastal ecological futures in an era of unprecedented change, FT210100792, Australian Research Council (Australia, Canberra) - ARC
Grant note: F.D.G. and K.J.T.E. were supported by the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master Degree in Tropical Biodiversity and Ecosystems – TROPIMUNDO, which is funded by the European Commission (EC contract N° 2019-1451). J.F. received funding from the Waitt Institute.
Organisation Unit: School of Science, Technology and Engineering
Language: English
Record Identifier: 991203451002621
Output Type: Journal article

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