THE 2022 floods put a third of Pakistan under water and affected 33 million people. The post-disaster needs assessment, prepared by the government with the World Bank, the ADB, the EU and UN agencies, put damages at USD 14.9 billion and economic losses at USD 15.2 billion. Sindh absorbed close to 70 per cent of that. Reconstruction needs came to at least USD 16.3 billion. Yet one of the few natural defences on Sindh’s coast rarely features in flood budgets: the mangrove forests of the Indus Delta.

Mangroves work on two ledgers at once. On flood protection, a 2020 study in Scientific Reports estimated that they avert more than USD 65 billion in property damage worldwide every year, and that 15 million more people would be flooded annually without them. That is a global estimate, not a Sindh figure, but the mechanism is local since the roots slow waves and storm surges before they reach villages and farmland. On climate, mangroves are the best-known “blue carbon” ecosystem, a term that entered policy vocabulary through a 2009 UN Environment Programme report. They hold three to five times more carbon per hectare than many land forests, most of it in waterlogged soil, where it stays locked away for centuries unless the forest is cleared.

Pakistan hosts the world’s largest blue carbon project. The Delta Blue Carbon project, developed by Indus Delta Capital in partnership with the Sindh........

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