In December 2020, Only One members are supporting the work of Mangrove Action Project (MAP), an organization conserving and restoring areas of degraded coastal mangrove forests, in the Andaman coast in southern Thailand.
Watch the short film below to learn more about mangroves and the vital work Only One is helping to support.
These remarkable aquatic forests not only support livelihoods and protect coastal villages from storms, they are also a vital nursery for young fish, and store up to ten times more carbon than rainforests, helping us all tackle climate change.
Only One is supporting the community of Nai Nang, who have launched an innovative mangrove beekeeping project — helping to conserve and restore vital coastal forests at the same time as benefiting the local community.
Project impact
4 villages supported in Nai Nang to train four neighbouring coastal villages in sustainable beekeeping
590-hectare community mangrove forest has biodiversity promoted
2 new honey-based products produced and marketed by the women’s group of Nai Nang
Up to 1000 litres of honey produced by four communities per year to support livelihoods and limit dependence on mangroves
More about Mangrove Action Project
Since 2009, MAP has been working with coastal communities in Thailand to restore mangroves along the Andaman coast. MAP provides technical support for mangrove restoration in the form of its Community-Based Ecological Mangrove Restoration (CBEMR) method, encouraging local communities to conserve and restore their mangroves through natural regeneration, while living amongst the forests and managing them sustainably.
In 2014 MAP began a restoration project with the village of Nai Nang, helping them to revive their lost mangrove forests and bring back the many benefits they provide. Following the training, and after observing bees pollinating the mangrove trees, a few families in the community began experimenting with mangrove beekeeping. By building bee boxes and placing them close to the mangrove forest they helped improve the restoration efforts in the forest and demonstrated that honey production could be a suitable alternative livelihood for the village.
Today, Nai Nang is a “bee village,” supported by their local initiative, with over 40 families producing up to 300 kilograms of honey per year from the 800 bee colonies across 1,200 beehives. Schools have installed beehives so the younger generation can learn about the importance of bees and pollination, and women’s groups have been set up to create honey related products such as shampoos and balms. The community’s relationship with their forest has changed from a negative dependency on mangroves, to an environmentally positive and sustainable one — reducing pesticide use and no longer cutting mangrove trees, clearing them for shrimp ponds, and exploiting them.
In just 35 years, more than half of Thailand’s mangroves have been destroyed (an estimated 56.5 percent), leading to poverty, land degradation, loss of resource-based livelihoods, increased vulnerability to natural disasters, deterioration of artisanal fisheries, and loss of important nursery habitats for hundreds of marine species. It’s imperative that we break current trends and promote strategies that are nature-based to help counteract environmental and climate breakdown.
Only One members are helping to alleviate poverty, address coastal degradation, and support the development of alternative livelihoods. Your contribution will provide funds for MAP and Nai Nang to train four neighboring coastal communities in mangrove beekeeping, improving their relationship with their mangroves, while offering a sustainable source of income.
Sharing their new conservation model where communities, bees, and mangroves all work together harmoniously, these pioneering apiculturists are not only improving their livelihoods, protecting their coastlines from storms, and restoring an ecosystem that supports many creatures from monkeys to crabs, they are also increasing the forests’ ability to store carbon, helping tackle climate change for all of us.
