Mangoro Market Meri: Women working together to protect their mangroves and build secure futures for their communities

MMM has developed a partnership with CARE International focused on enabling gender equity and diversity trainings and capacity building trainings for our women communities. Post Covid, the project is also working to improve livelihoods by rebuilding the value chains impacted by the pandemic, ensuring effective management and optimizing efficiency, reducing costs, improving quality, and enhancing overall competitiveness in the marketplace for women engaging in selling mud crabs. MMM is also partnering with the Seventh Day Adventist Church to construct a mangrove boardwalk at the Boutama area in the Bootless Bay National Marine Sanctuary designed to be a tourist attraction, with two local communities supported to build mangrove nurseries in a campaign to plant 20,000 seedlings by 2030. Seedlings are also sold for $1 per seed to support their livelihoods and provide an incentive to mangrove conservation. As a result of TNC’s work establishing and supporting MMM, we have been asked by the PNG government to support the development of the carbon policy that integrates improved protection and management of coastal ecosystems including mangroves into its commitments such as Nationally Determined Contribution (NDC) and National Adaptation Plan (NAP)