Kenya: 'We Only Have One Ocean' - Kenya's 'Mother Mangrove' Calls for Urgent Ocean Protection

Mombasa, Kenya — In Kenya, community conservationists are leading the charge to restore carbon-rich mangroves. Zulfa Hassan has inspired women to rehabilitate damaged mangrove forest ecosystems, restoring marine life and securing livelihoods.

Mangroves are among the most carbon-rich forests in the world because of their high carbon content. The mangrove ecosystem supports significant marine biodiversity and human well-being and is one of the most beneficial ecosystems. Fish breed in these habitats, the coasts are protected from erosion, sediments, and contaminants are filtered before they reach corals and seagrass. Mangrove roots can also trap floating pieces of plastic in the open ocean, fighting plastic pollution.

Mangrove forests also store four times more carbon than rainforests and are vital for fighting climate change.

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Mangrove forests store 50 times more carbon in their soils per surface area than tropical forests and ten times more than temperate forests. Protecting coastal trees is therefore critical in the fight against climate change and global warming.

Hassan is known in her community as Mama Mikoko, translated to Mother Mangrove in Swahili. Her conservation journey began in 2018 after members of her community participated in a learning visit to Madagascar. What they saw changed everything.

"We saw how communities were conserving and restoring mangroves and we were inspired to bring this back to our community," she said.

Back in Lamu, many residents viewed mangroves primarily as a source of firewood, building materials and income. Few understood the broader ecological role the forests played in supporting fisheries, protecting coastlines, and sustaining local livelihoods. What began as a self-help group for women evolved into the Mangrove Restoration Initiative, now open to broader community membership.

Like many others in her community, Hassan once believed mangroves would naturally regenerate without human intervention.

"There was a perception that God gave mangroves and that they would always be there," she said. "People thought restoring them was unnecessary."

Years of unchecked harvesting, however, had taken a toll.

Mangrove forests were being cleared for timber, construction materials, and other commercial uses. At times, mangroves were exported to Arab countries for products including chalk. This left large stretches of degraded coastline. The scale of the problem became impossible to ignore.

Decades of harvesting had left large stretches of coastline bare, no mangroves, no shade, no buffer against the sea. And without the mangroves, the fish disappeared too.

"The fish were disappearing, there were fewer crabs, and people's livelihoods were suffering," said Hassan.

Determined to reverse the decline, Hassan and other women began organizing restoration efforts. They collected seedlings, planted mangroves, and raised awareness about sustainable resource use. More than 30 hectares of mangrove forest have been planted and restored since the Mangrove Restoration Initiative was launched in 2018. Local fishermen now have hope after fish and crab populations recovered in restored areas, she said.

"We also understand that it is our responsibility to take care of these resources so that they don't run out," she said.

The restoration work is led almost entirely by women. Every Friday, members of the group gather to harvest seedlings, plant them, and monitor their growth. Between those sessions, women also collect plastic waste from the mangroves and the ocean, picking it up whenever they encounter it, sorting it, and selling it to recyclers.

However, conservation work has not been without challenges.

While taking on increasingly visible leadership roles in mangrove restoration, women encountered opposition within their families and communities. Traditional views of women restricted them to domestic duties, such as raising children, managing a household, and caring for their husbands.

For women to be stepping outside those boundaries, spending time on coastal restoration and environmental advocacy, created real tension.

"While women were fighting to restore mangroves, it was largely men who had been cutting them down. The restoration movement and the logging economy were, in many cases, divided sharply along gender lines, and that dynamic sparked conflict within households and the wider community," said Hassan.

To address these challenges, the group focused heavily on community awareness and education. To reduce dependency on mangrove firewood, they encouraged households to adopt energy-saving cookstoves (jikos) and use alternative building materials instead of mangrove timber. The women also created alternative sources of income tied to conservation, including ecotourism and sustainable marine livelihoods. The efforts made a positive difference in the reduction of destructive harvesting.

The group created new economic opportunities rooted in conservation itself. The community now runs ecotourism boardwalks through the mangrove forests, a restaurant, and various small businesses that depend on a healthy coastal environment. Mangrove-based income has helped the group make the case that saving the forest is not a sacrifice - it is an investment.

Hassan now wears many hats.

She is chairlady of the Mangrove Restoration Initiative, which began as a women's self-help group and has since grown into a registered Community-Based Organisation (CBO) encompassing much of the broader Bajun community. She is also a trained facilitator in gender and leadership (LAMP training) and a member of the Training of Trainers (TOT) programme. She sits on the local Beach Management Unit, the governance body that oversees coastal and fisheries resources. Beyond her conservation work, she is a boat owner and fisherwoman. On any given morning, after preparing her children for school and tending to household tasks, she checks on her boat's catch - lobsters, tuna, prawns.

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Her leadership has also helped open doors for more women to participate in local decision-making structures, including beach management units and conservation committees.

"Women are now getting involved in leadership and decision-making spaces that they were not part of before," she said. For Hassan, women play a critical role in marine conservation, particularly through mangrove restoration activities such as collecting seedlings, planting trees, and monitoring their growth.

She said that she was struck by something she saw as she walked the exhibition halls at the Our Ocean Conference - women everywhere, doing conservation work. "Seeing other women also involved in conservation gives her the motivation and validation that it is not just them," she said. "There are other women in other places doing similar work."

Her message to world leaders and fellow ocean advocates is simple yet urgent.

"We only have one ocean," Hassan said. "We must protect it today and for tomorrow so that everyone can benefit. It is our responsibility to take care of it."