Protecting Coastal Wetlands in the Western Indian Ocean

The Pew Charitable Trusts’ partnership with Seychelles, which began in 2019, resulted in the country committing in its 2021 nationally determined contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement to protect all its mangrove and seagrass ecosystems by 2030 and to map all of its seagrass, with an accompanying carbon stock assessment. These commitments also led to new words for seagrass being added to the Creole dictionary in 2022. The successes in Seychelles spurred interest in similar efforts among other countries in the western Indian Ocean region. In 2024, Pew established partnerships to support Kenya, Mozambique, and Tanzania in including coastal wetlands as nature-based climate solutions in their 2025 revised NDCs.

The successful mapping of Seychelles seagrass also was the impetus for a new project, the Large-Scale Seagrass Mapping and Management Initiative (LaSMMI), which aims to develop a field-verified seagrass map for countries in the western Indian Ocean and strengthen seagrass research capacity. Pew, together with the University of Southampton, Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association, and researchers from the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, the Institute of Fisheries and Marine Sciences at Toliara University, the Universidade Eduardo Mondlane, the University of Dar es Salaam, and the State University of Zanzibar, are mapping seagrass ecosystems in Kenya, Madagascar, Mozambique, and Tanzania and supporting governments in using the maps to inform their coastal management and climate decision-making.