Between 1996 and 2020, the world lost about 6,900 km² of mangrove forest — roughly 4.5% of the total. Over the same period, the share of mangroves under formal protection more than doubled, from 16% to 35%. The two trends move in opposite directions, and understanding where and why is the point of this page.
Global summary
Global mangrove cover has been slowly shrinking while protection has grown steadily. By 2020, over 3,200 protected areas contained mangroves — yet the overall forest kept getting smaller.
Country comparison
Protection rates vary enormously. Bangladesh has 90% of its mangroves inside protected areas and has slightly grown its total cover since 1996. Pakistan protects 32% but has lost more than a fifth of its mangrove area over the same period. Brazil grew its protected share from 39% to 66% while losing less than 1% of cover. Suriname, with 42% protection, actually gained 6% more forest.
The “Changes since 1996” map view shows mangrove cover lost (red) and gained (green) relative to 1996; black areas are unchanged. The 1996 baseline comes from JERS-1 radar and is noisier than later years, so scattered apparent change at high zoom is partly classification artifact.status_yr is unknown. The global trends chart, country table, and country time series are year-aware: a protected area counts toward year Y only if its WDPA status_yr is known and ≤ Y.
Data sources
Protected areas: IUCN and UNEP-WCMC (2026), The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) and World Database on Other Effective Area-based Conservation Measures (WD-OECM), August 2026 release, downloaded 2026-08-24. Cambridge, UK: UNEP-WCMC and IUCN. Available at protectedplanet.net under the UNEP-WCMC data licence. Boundaries shown are simplified for display; obtain the data itself from Protected Planet. Mangrove extent: Bunting P., Rosenqvist A., Hilarides L., Lucas R.M., Thomas N., Tadono T., Worthington T.A., Spalding M., Murray N.J., Rebelo L-M. (2022). Global Mangrove Watch (1996–2020) Version 3.0 Dataset. Remote Sensing 14(15):3657, doi:10.3390/rs14153657. Licensed CC BY 4.0. Basemap: © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), rendered with Protomaps. Country boundaries derived from OpenStreetMap.