The United Nations has advocated paying credits to communities that maintain or restore their mangroves.
Under its climate change convention, the UN has a new method for calculating the role that mangroves play in slowing climate change by capturing and storing carbon dioxide.
The International Union for Conservation of Nature, the IUCN, says mangroves are much more efficient in trapping carbon than tropical or temperate forests.
Its Oceania director, Taholo Kami, says the new methodology is a significant boost to efforts to restore a resource that's vital in a number of ways.
"People only begin to realise that it's a win-win all round and then you throw in the carbon sequestration and the value of your mangrove forests, it goes up again. And these are the sorts of things we are trying to get governments to commit to, recognising the importance of mangroves on a national scale and then engaging communities of landowners, and one way or another to manage what they have."
