Let Them Eat Shrimp

Earlier this year I was planting mangrove seedlings in the Pacific island nation of Kiribati. It was unspeakably hot and humid on the white lagoon sands in the glare of the equatorial sun, but my companions and I were full of the energy and esprit de corps of those who know that small acts of ecological investment can yield outsize environmental dividends. In Kiribati, and in islands and coastal communities around the world, there is growing realization that mangroves have a crucial role to play in protecting land, enhancing fisheries, sustaining livelihoods and stabilizing climate.

In 2011, when Let Them Eat Shrimp was published, those benefits were less widely appreciated. Today, especially in light of the urgency to address runaway global warming, the rainforests of the sea have come to seen as vital carbon assets and biodiversity storehouses.

So how well are the world’s mangrove forests doing in 2015?

I suppose the answer would have to be “better than they were, but not as well as they should be.” I still see the words “mangrove destruction” and “alarming rate” linked together in reports of changing land use—typically from mangrove wetlands to aquaculture ponds and agricultural areas.

The twin boom crops of shrimp and palm oil still fuel far too much wetland loss. In a report released late last year, the United Nations Environment Program noted that mangrove forests are still being cleared three to five times faster than terrestrial forests.

Yet the tide is turning. Part of this turn is a response to scientific work that overwhelmingly shows that the economic value of intact mangrove forests far exceeds returns from converting them to other uses, such as shrimp ponds. In a paper published in late 2014 that compared ecosystem and livelihood values from Amazonian mangrove forests with the productivity and commercial returns of shrimp farms, the researchers concluded that “aquaculture activities in the Amazon coastal plain are not sustainable from environmental and socioeconomic perspectives.”

Consumer education over the provenance of food is also playing a part. Marine certification programs have been developed that aim to give customers the information they need to determine if the seafood they buy is sustainably sourced.

The Aquaculture Stewardship Council, founded in 2010, is one such program. Under ASC standards shrimp grown in aquaculture farms sited in mangrove systems cannot be certified if those farms were built after 1999. Farms built before that date have to demonstrate that they are taking compensatory measures (such as replanting mangroves elsewhere) in order to have their product certified.

The outcome is that in countries such as Vietnam, which allowed massive conversion of mangroves to shrimp ponds in the 1980s, some areas are now seeing net afforestation, rather than net loss. And this year Sri Lanka legislated to protect all its mangrove forests—a move that could prompt other nations to follow suit.

The value of “blue carbon”—the immense repository of carbon stored in mangroves, seagrass beds and tidal marshes (and thus kept out of the atmosphere)—is now not only unquestioned, but increasingly seen as a pivotal economic asset for the mostly developing countries where these ecosystems flourish.

Even so, carbon funding mechanisms are still in their infancy. I look forward to the day when thriving carbon markets operate in all developing countries with large mangrove expanses, providing viable economic alternatives to forest clearance for coastal dwellers whose income options are few.

Ten years ago, when I started researching mangroves for National Geographic—the work that led to Let Them Eat Shrimp—it was my encounters with mangrove dwellers, seeing at first hand the suffering they face when their forests are destroyed, that most affected me.

My eyes are still on those people and their prospects. I believe their situation is improving, but there is much that the developed world must do to strengthen their long-term security—by choosing sustainable seafood, avoiding products derived from forest clearance, and supporting carbon financing mechanisms that promote the preservation of mangrove forests.

Los pueblos del manglares, the people of the mangroves, must not fall from our view. As Pope Francis stated forcefully in the encyclical he issued a fortnight ago, “a true ecological approach . . . must integrate questions of justice in debates on the environment, so as to hear both the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor.”

In this installment of this occasional series, we hear from Kennedy Warne, author of Let Them Eat Shrimp.

Q. You call mangroves the “rainforests of the sea.” While most people know about rainforests, most don’t know about mangroves. Why is that and why are they important?

A. Mangroves tend to be associated with mud, and most people don’t like mud. (With the possible exception of potters.) They also tend to harbor mosquitoes, and very few people (apart from entomologists) like mosquitoes. So there are a couple of reasons straight off the bat why mangroves have been maligned and disrespected—or simply ignored. While terrestrial tropical rainforests aren’t exactly fun places to be, with their torpid heat, abundance of bugs, high rainfall, and other challenging attributes—people still recognize their importance and endorse efforts to prevent their destruction. Why aren’t mangroves higher on the environmental priority list? I don’t know. Their contribution to the planet and to humankind is immense. As I write in the book, they serve as coastal barricades and land stabilizers; they supply nutrients to the sea and nursery grounds for marine life; and they provide homes and livelihoods for millions of people across the tropical world.

Q. What sparked your interest in mangroves and how did you come to write a book about them?

A. I live in New Zealand, and have always been strongly drawn to the sea. In northern New Zealand, where I live, we have just one species of mangrove (some countries have 20 or more), and it forms lush coastal forests. From childhood, I was aware of an aura of mystery and surprise about these places. Strange sights, sounds and smells emanated from them. They intrigued me. When I was editor of New Zealand Geographic magazine, I decided it would be a good thing to produce a large feature story on what goes on in a mangrove forest, and I learned such a lot from helping research and produce that story that my attachment to these places increased. Ten years later, when I started writing for National Geographic magazine, I proposed a story on mangroves of the world, and that was the genesis of the book.

In the village of Curral Velho, Alouiso Rodrigues dos Santos laments the loss of his fertile land, turned into a salt marsh by brine leaking from a shrimp farm on his boundary. Photo by Kennedy Warne.

 

Q. In the book you detail the devastation caused by shrimp aquaculture. How has the western taste for massive amounts of this “luxury” food at a cheap price played a role?

A. The problem with shrimp aquaculture is that in the industry’s pioneering years, during the 1970s and 1980s, the ideal site for a shrimp pond happened to be at about the same position on the shore that mangroves flourish: low enough to get occasional tidal flow, but high enough not to be affected by tides all the time. Because mangrove forests tended to be public lands occupied by subsistence communities, they were readily appropriated by a combination of commercial aggression and governmental compliance. Governments in developing countries became keen backers of shrimp farming because shrimp fetched a high price in the West, and was therefore a reliable source of foreign exchange. It was relatively easy for aquaculture corporations to clear mangroves and build shrimp ponds, the land was cheap to rent and there was plenty of it, so the cost of farming shrimp was low. Probably the most odious part of the early years of shrimp framing was that when one pond was nutritionally exhausted, the company would abandon it and bulldoze some more mangroves to build a new one. So the forests gave way to ever-expanding swathes of ponds. And all the while, consumers in the West couldn’t believe their luck, that such a tasty seafood was flooding into supermarket freezers and on to restaurant menus for such a cheap price. They never made the connection between cheap shrimp and disappearing mangrove forests.

Jim Eong Ong has made a lifetime study of carbon pathways in the mangrove forests of Malaysia—much of it atop a 65-foot tower. Photo by Kennedy Warne.

 

Q. One of the many secrets mangroves hold is their potential to store carbon. What is their potential for mitigating climate change and is it being recognized?

A. Scientists have found that mangroves are among the most effective carbon sinks of all forest types. Because they are found in tropical zones of fierce sunlight and abundant moisture, they grow fast and form carbon-storing tissues at a rapid rate. When their leaves, twigs and branches fall into the mud, a lot of that detritus gets buried in the soft sediment, and its associated carbon can remain “locked up” for centuries. Carbon that might otherwise be oxidized to carbon dioxide, escalating global warming, is taken out of the atmospheric game. So an intact mangrove forest is a very useful carbon store—and economists are finally catching on that this one ecological service alone is worth far more than all the shrimp that you could grow in its place. But there are many, many ecological services that mangroves perform, and if you put them all together you would consider that cutting down a mangrove forest would be economically crazy. I think this message is slowly starting to filter through to people. We can’t go on pretending that our lifestyles are ecological sustainable when they clearly are not.

Q. As you traveled, you saw first-hand the devastation caused by shrimp aquaculture and massive coastal development. How has this impacted both the environment and the local communities?

A. When you read statistics of how much mangrove forest individual countries have lost—50%, 60%, 70%—it can be very hard to get a picture of what those coastlines would have looked like if they had been left alone. But then you go to a place like the Sundarbans, the largest tract of mangrove in the world, and it starts to dawn on you the magnitude of what has been lost. And because mangroves are among the most biologically diverse forests on earth, you also realize that many species that rely on mangroves have disappeared too. Australian writer Tim Flannery wrote a book called A Gap in Nature, and that is what mangrove clearance has caused: a very large, unfillable gap in nature. Initially, my interest was focused on the natural history of mangroves. But then I started to meet people whose lives had been disrupted—more than that, catastrophically damaged—by mangrove deforestation, and I started to turn my attention to the impact mangrove loss was having on coastal communities. They were losing a physical resource, of course—a source of timber, thatch, medicine, food—but they were also losing a defining part of their identity as forest dwellers. It would be like living next to a river and waking up one morning and finding the river was gone. Their plight affected me deeply.

Q. For the book you traveled all over the world and met many people. Who did you meet and why are their stories important?

A. I tried to cover as many angles as I could of the world of mangroves, from a Malaysian scientist who spent a lifetime studying carbon movement within mangrove ecosystems, to a retired American chemist who has devoted his twilight years to planting mangroves on the shores of the Red Sea, to coastal villagers in Brazil who fought, and won, a battle to prevent an enormous shrimp farm being built beside them, to traditional mangrove cockle gatherers in Ecuador . . . and that’s only about a third of the people I’ve written about in the book. Each one gave me a slightly different window onto the subject, and by telling their stories I hoped to show readers that mangroves aren’t some boring little backwater of a subject, but a really vital and important world that they should know about.

An armada of fishers use fine nets to sieve rivers in the Sundarbans for shrimp fry to supply a growing shrimp-farming industry. Photo by Kennedy Warne.

 

Q. How should local governments balance the importance of mangroves with business interests like shrimp aquaculture and development?

A. That’s an economic question, but it’s also a question of social justice. In the book I talk about the growing discipline of ecological economics, in which economists have begun to put a value on the services that ecosystems like forests provide to the planet. It turns out that forests are far more valuable if they are left standing than if they are cut down. That doesn’t mean we should stop logging all forests, but we should certainly open our eyes to the true costs associated with that choice to fire up the chainsaw. Mangrove destruction has been driven by the desire for short-term gain. I think the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami was a tremendous wake-up call for countries which had allowed their living sea-walls, the mangrove forests, to be removed. It shouldn’t take tragedies like that to make us think about the long-term implications of our economic decisions. Similarly, coastal people have lacked a voice and identity, so have been easily pushed aside, and their interests disregarded, in the quest for a quick peso. But I have been inspired by the courage these small, marginalized communities have shown in standing up to corporations and even their own governments in demanding recognition for their way of life, their environment, and their basic human needs.

A woman from the village of Hirgigo in Eritrea harvests propagules from flourishing five-year-old mangrove trees that will be used to plant new areas of coastline and feed sheep and goats. Photo by Kennedy Warne.

 

Q. What are some of the challenges to mangrove restoration?

A. One of the problems is that agencies involved in mangrove restoration have tended to plant just one or two species, instead of aiming to recreate the forest in all its diversity and complexity. So you get mangrove plantations rather than mangrove forests, and their value, both to nature and to people, is greatly diminished. So it’s important to have an ecosystem approach to restoration, not just a focus on “How many mangroves can we plant today?” But a more fundamental problem is that mangrove restoration is often not perceived as a high priority compared to, say, coral reef restoration or the rainforests of the Amazon. So we come back to the problem of perception: that mangroves aren’t appealing places, that they’re somehow “second-class” ecological citizens. One of the most arresting statements I’ve read about mangroves was made by a group of scientists a few years ago, saying that unless the current rate of mangrove loss (between 1 and 2% loss per year) is halted and turned around, within 100 years mangroves will be gone. We need to take that warning seriously.

Q. What can people who don’t live near mangroves do to help protect them?

A. There are several organizations that are working to protect mangroves, so a good place to start would be to get on a mailing list or two, and become acquainted with the issues and hotspots. We can all play a part when it comes to applying pressure on corporations or governments that are acting badly in terms of the environment or human rights. The second thing people can do is think about their purchasing decisions, and how they may be having an impact far from these shores. Ask questions. Look at product labels. Where does this shrimp come from? What is the environmental record of the company supplying it, or the country where it is produced? Can I eat this food in good conscience? Or perhaps you might take another look at that beach resort you’re planning to visit for your vacation. Was it built by clearing a mangrove forest? Was a community displaced as a result? But I would say the best thing—the most lasting choice—people can make is to put a visit to a mangrove forest on the to-do list. There are mangrove ecotourism opportunities throughout the world, from simple boardwalk tours to riverboat cruises, to snorkeling among the mangrove roots, which is like gliding through the arches of a cathedral. Once you have walked in a mangrove forest, you may find, as I have, that they have a magic that is beyond words.

The closing of a loophole in a venerable tariff act that allowed goods derived from slave labor to enter the US is welcome news.

In part, the impetus for reform arose from evidence of slavery and human trafficking in the shrimp industry.

More than 90 percent of the shrimp consumed in the US comes from overseas shrimp farms that rely on fishmeal as shrimp food. That fishmeal is produced from fish caught by trawlers, some of whose crews are forced to work in conditions of economic slavery.

While shrimp farms themselves aren’t implicated as users of slave labor (though the use of child labor has been widely reported in the industry), their feedstock is now seen as morally suspect.

Between 2006 and 2009, when I was researching shrimp aquaculture for my book on mangroves—Let Them Eat Shrimp: The Tragic Disappearance of the Rainforests of the Sea—I learned many grim details of the shrimp industry, both from former shrimp-farm workers and from communities whose lives had been affected by the depredations of the industry.

One thing to realize is that shrimp farming isn’t a labor-intensive industry like catching fish in the ocean. In fact, that’s one of the societal problems associated with the industry. It commandeers huge tracts of coastal land, displacing thousands of coastal people, while offering a paltry number of jobs in return. And those jobs are poorly paid and often involve handling dangerous chemicals.

So for the dozens of tropical countries where the shrimp industry has established itself—the so-called “developing” nations of Southeast Asia, central Africa and Central and South America—the primary justice issue is not enslavement of people but their displacement from traditional food-harvesting areas and the loss of a vital forest resource.

After my book was published, I gave an illustrated talk on the destructive impact of shrimp farming on mangroves to an audience of “thought leaders” in New York.

I recall getting quite passionate about the bulldozing of mangrove forests and the ensuing loss of food security for coastal people who rely on these saltwater forests for sustenance, livelihood, identity and all forms of wellbeing.

I probably quoted a mangrove activist in Honduras who said of the conversion of mangrove forests into shrimp ponds, “We have turned the blood of our people into an appetizer.”

During the question time that followed the presentation, a woman in the audience asked if there were any known health issues with eating farmed shrimp, because surely this was the only factor that would cause people to reconsider their consumption of it.

I was taken aback. Call me idealistic and naïve, but I had thought that if a compelling enough case could be made for the infringed rights, displacement and impoverishment of mangrove dwellers, this would be cause enough for seafood diners in wealthy countries to swear off farmed shrimp.

I spluttered something about social justice and the immorality of a food system that is wilfully blind to its human impacts. But I knew in my heart that for this woman—and many like her—that wouldn’t be a persuasive enough reason to shift eating choices.

People’s moral settings are complex. Evidence of human enslavement raises an outcry and compels long-overdue legislative reform. Evidence of environmental destruction and its consequences for subsistence communities? Not so much. That’s a more complex issue, involving as it does the collusion of the very governments that should be upholding the existence rights and food security of its least powerful citizens. It’s easy to let the issue slide.

Yet at the very least, knowledge is an essential first step to taking responsibility.

My New York audience may still be eating shrimp cocktails, but they can’t say they don’t know whose blood is in that appetizer.

This holiday season, consider the Icelandic tradition of gifting books. They don't go bad, are one-size-fits-all, and are sure to make anyone on your shopping list smile.With a library of more than 1,000 books, make Island Press your one-stop shop for book buying, so you can get back to enjoying the holidays. To help you out, we've compiled a list of staff selections and mentions on various best-of lists. 

Get any of these books at your favorite neighborhood bookstore or online retailer!

For the health nut in your life – Whitewash

Let me just say I am unequivocally a health nut; I am definitely that friend who will straight up say “you so should not eat, it is so unhealthy for you.” So If you have a friend or family member that is kind of like me and cares about the kind of food and chemicals they put in their body; Carey Gillam Whitewash is the book to have!  This riveting number exposes just how far one company is willing to go to line their pockets while showing total disregard for public health and safety. You think you know what is being sprayed on your food, well this book is here to say think again!

Whitewash is aslo one of Civil Eats' Favorite Food and Farming Books of 2017

For the Lego lover in your life – Design for Good

What good is building something if it doesn’t help the people it’s build for? In John Cary’s Design for Good, readers are presented with colorful, character-driven stories about project around that are designed with dignity in mind. Did we mention it also contains a ton of drool-worthy photos of architecture?

Design for Good is aslo featured on the San Francisco Chronicle's 2017 holiday books gift guide. Check it out!

For the peacekeeper in your life – The Spirit of Dialogue

Know someone who always serves as the conflict resolver for your friends or family? Give them some new ideas of masterful mediation with The Spirit of Dialogue which draws lessons from a diversity of faith traditions to transform conflict. Whether atheist or fundamentalist, Muslim or Jewish, Quaker or Hindu, any reader involved in difficult dialogue will find concrete steps towards meeting of souls. 

For the history buff in your life – Toms River

Toms River recounts the sixty-year saga that plagued this small New Jersey town. Your history-loving friend will meet industrial polluters and the government regulators who enabled them, the pioneering scientists who first identified pollutants as a cause of cancer, and the brave individuals who fought for justice. Longtime journalist Dan Fagin won the Pulitzer Prize for this page-turner, and gives us all a reason to think twice about what’s lurking in the water.

For the person in your life who thinks the environmental movement is made up of white outdoorsmen (or for the person in your life who thinks that the environmental movements doesn’t include them) – Energy Democracy

Energy Democracy frames the international struggle of working people, low-income communities, and communities of color to take control of energy resources from the energy establishment and use those resources to empower their communities—literally providing energy, economically, and politically. The diverse voices in this book show that the global fight to save the planet—to conserve and restore our natural resources to be life-sustaining—must fully engage community residents and must change the larger economy to be sustainable, democratic, and just.

For the lazy environmentalist in your life – Design Professionals Guide to Zero-Net Energy Building

We all know someone who really means well and cares about the environment, but cannot be bothered to change his lifestyle. With the Design Professionals Guide to Zero-Net Energy Building, you can introduce the zero-net energy building, which offers a practical and cost-effective way to address climate change without compromising quality of life.

For the foodie in your life – No One Eats Alone

For your favorite gourmand, give the gift of No One Eats Alone, an exploration of how to deepen connections to our food sources and to our own communities. Through over 250 interviews, Michael Carolan shows concerned food citizens opportunities for creating a more equitable and sustainable foodscape

For the conservation warrior in your life – Nature’s Allies

Worried about the state of nature in our divided world? Or know someone who is? Nature’s Allies is a refreshing antidote to helplessness and inertia. Within its pages Larry Nielsen brings alive stories of brave men and women around the world who have responded to the conservation crises of their time by risking their reputations, well-being, and even lives to stand up for nature when no one else would do so. These stories provide inspiration for a new generation of conservationists to step up in the face of adversity and challenge social and environmental injustice occurring today—and to assure them that they can make a difference by speaking out. This year, give a holiday gift of courage and inspiration: Nature’s Allies.

For the traveler in your life – Let Them Eat Shrimp

This book brings to life the importance of mangroves. Mangroves have many jobs: protecting coastlines, acting as nurseries for all kinds of fish, provide livlihoods and food for people. Kennedy Warne dives into the muddy waters of the mangrove world and shares the stories of the people who depend on them. The book is both a well-written travelogue and exploration of the science of the mangroves ecological service they provide.

Don't just take our word for it, check out these best-of lists:

For the nature-in-cities lover in your life – Handbook of Biophilic City Planning & Design

Featured on the ASLA's The Dirt Best Books of 2017

For the bike lover in your life – Bike Boom

One of Planetizen's Best Books of 2017 and one of the four books in Bicycle Times' Gift Guide Cycling Enthusiast