The International Mangrove Center has opened its secretariat in Shenzhen, giving the world’s first intergovernmental mangrove organisation a working home one day before APEC forestry ministers convened in the same city. That is according to Xinhua, which confirmed the centre’s first council meeting adopted its strategic plan, agreed its rules of procedure, and appointed its first Secretary-General on Sunday.
Proposed by China at the 2022 Ramsar Convention summit and established by agreement in November 2024, the centre counts eight member states and 13 signatory countries across Asia, Africa, and the Americas. “Let us work together to write a new chapter in global wetland protection,” Xi Jinping said in the 2022 address that first put the centre forward.
China backed the launch with hard numbers, as Liu Guohong, the administrator of the National Forestry and Grassland Administration, told the council that the national mangrove estate has grown 44 per cent this century to 31,700 hectares. Much of that gain has come from converting former aquaculture ponds back into tidal forests, with the ecosystems now protected by a dedicated national wetland law.
Liu called for a global digital service platform for mangroves and a series of international demonstration projects, China Daily reported. Preparations for the launch took four years and included six training workshops for 137 participants from 30 countries and regions.
It comes as the APEC Ministerial Meeting on Forestry started its two-day program on Monday, the first forestry ministerial on Chinese soil in 15 years and an early fixture of a host year that brings APEC leaders back to the same city later in 2026. Ministers meet through Tuesday under the theme Building a Green Asia-Pacific, Sharing Ecological Well-being.
Policy dialogues span forest conservation, sustainable management, and the balance between ecological protection and livelihoods, with APEC also naming the trade in illegally harvested timber as a continuing threat to legitimate markets and forest-dependent communities. Economies will review progress on global forest goals and share restoration practices for mangroves and other coastal ecosystems.
Li Yunqing, a deputy head of the forestry administration, put the regional stakes on the record when the meeting was announced on 9 July. APEC economies hold more than half the world’s forest area, 60 per cent of global forest product output, and 40 per cent of forest product trade, along with nearly half the planet’s mangroves, Li said.
Hong Kong joined on day one, with Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan travelling to Shenzhen on Monday morning to witness four agencies finalise the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Joint Botanical Garden Co-operation Agreement, before joining the ministerial session on Tuesday morning.
Shenzhen built its host case on the wetland itself, with the meeting’s otter mascot, Fuuta, modelled on Eurasian otters of the Futian Mangrove National Nature Reserve, the only national-level nature reserve within the downtown core of a Chinese city. Recovery there follows a wider global rebound that has pulled mangrove forests back from decades of loss, driven in large part by restoration across Asia.
