Egypt's Red Sea Mangrove Replanting Programme — State-Funded Restoration with Mixed Results

In April 2020, Egypt's government-run Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) launched a two-year, EGP 4 million (roughly €200,000) programme to replant 210 hectares of mangroves across six sites on the Red Sea and Sinai coasts, employing paid crews of about 10 workers per site during the April–October planting season. The programme targeted 300,000 seedlings a year, and also piloted mangrove-adjacent honey production as an alternative livelihood, selling roughly 200 kg over six months at EGP 200–300 (about €10–15) per kilogram.

Results were mixed rather than uniformly positive. Only three of the six planned sites — Safaga, Hamara and Al-Qala'n — were actually completed; a planned site at Al-Quweh village failed to launch. Actual seedling production reached only around 50,000 trees a year, about a third of the 300,000 target, with reporting citing lengthy security-approval processes and workforce commutes exceeding 400 km between sites as major obstacles. Where restoration did take hold, previously depleted fish and other marine species were reported to have reappeared.

A separate, better-funded initiative — the Mangrove Ecosystem Restoration in Egypt (MERS) project, a 2021–2026 partnership between HSBC and the American University in Cairo's Center for Applied Research on the Environment and Sustainability (CARES), with FAO and International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) support — targets roughly 10,000 new seedlings a year across degraded sites from El Gouna to Halayeb and Shalateen, explicitly building in ecotourism and small-business livelihoods for participating communities. As of the sources reviewed this programme's own quantified restoration results were not yet separately reported, so it is cited here as corroborating context for a genuine, multi-funder push on Egyptian Red Sea mangroves rather than as an independently evidenced result in its own right.

On balance, this is a real, state co-funded restoration effort with a paid local workforce and a genuine livelihoods component, but the government-funded phase's own reporting is candid about under-achieving its planting target and about one site failing outright — useful as an honest, moderate-evidence case rather than a polished success story.

Read more: https://www.euronews.com/2022/05/02/a-mangrove-revolution-how-egypt-is-prioritising-climate-projects-in-the-run-up-to-cop27

Read the full analysis: https://www.euronews.com/2022/05/02/a-mangrove-revolution-how-egypt-is-prioritising-climate-projects-in-the-run-up-to-cop27