Editorial: Mangroves in the Anthropocene: From local change to global challenge
Luiz Drude de Lacerda, Alexander Cesar Ferreira, Raymond D. Ward, Rebecca Borges
Abstract
Recently, Norman Duke et al. published a doom alert on a world without mangroves, \nwhere extinction of entire forests or over-fragmentation of large stretches of mangroves \nwas a real and present nightmare (Duke et al., 2007). Historically, mangroves have been \nconsidered either a nuisance or a source of rapid and easy profit, both views resulting \nin degradation and loss. The few exceptions were the traditional “Mangrove People” \n(Vannucci, 1989), traditional human groups throughout the tropics living in balance \nwith these ecosystems while directly benefitting from their services and goods. These \ntraditional populations have suffered pressure from growing production and resource \nexploitation in most of today’s societies and continue to be systematically displaced along \nwith mangrove destruction and degradation. [...]