How Ecuador is scoring climate goals

Churute, Ecuador— The tide is low, and Arnold, a local crabber, is shoulder-deep in the mud.

He silently ducks under the arcing mangrove roots, reaching into the black mud for the red crabs that will complete his bundle bound for market.

Both he and the mangrove are doing quiet work for his family and community, and the mangrove will keep at it long after Arnold has waded home.

Ecuador’s mangroves have broken the force of the waves and banked carbon in their waterlogged soil. But this natural defence has been losing ground.

Since the 1960s, Ecuador’s mangroves have been steadily pushed back by urban expansion, agriculture, port development, and aquaculture. But the most visible wound has come from shrimp farming: nearly a quarter of the country’s mangroves have been cleared in recent decades, much of it to make way for shrimp ponds in an industry now worth billions.

Ecuador doesn't turn a blind eye to this tension. Successive governments have developed programmes to conserve and restore mangroves while ensuring the shrimp economy and other livelihoods flourish.

GCF’s investment in FP235: Mangroves for Climate with the Ministry of Environment and Energy and Conservation International supports Ecuador’s multi-layered effort to make this goal possible.

Protecting remaining mangrove ecosystems is both a conservation priority and a strategic investment in coastal resilience, community livelihoods, and climate action. Like a championship team, mangroves defend coastlines, form a natural barrier against storms and erosion, and score decisive climate goals by storing carbon in their soils and biomass.

Through the GCF-Conservation International partnership, Ecuador is advancing an integrated approach that brings together communities, government institutions, and private-sector actors around a shared objective: safeguarding this natural champion while supporting sustainable coastal development.

Arnold belongs to a cangrejeros association that holds one of Ecuador's mangrove custody agreements — AUSCEMs, a 25-year-old government-backed instrument that formalises a community's stewardship over a stretch of mangrove forest. By July 2025, during the project’s inception phase, the Ecuadorian State had brought 100,000 hectares of mangrove under community-based protection through these agreements.

GCF's investment is designed to extend that reach. By July 2026, community-based mangrove protection had increased to 116,000 hectares, and 22 applications covering more than 17,000 hectares have entered Ecuador's National Forest Conservation Program (Socio Bosque).

Training comes with the agreement. Arnold has learned to take the red crab without tearing the roots that hold the bank together. It’s a small technique, repeated across thousands of harvests, that decides whether the forest regenerates or thins.

For years, the relationship was zero-sum: shrimp ponds expanded, mangroves retreated. In June 2026, a step toward a win-win began to take shape. Ecuador's National Aquaculture Chamber and the Sustainable Shrimp Partnership signed an agreement with Conservation International to restore 250 hectares of mangrove inside shrimp-farming operations by 2030. This move is expected to cut roughly 112,000 tonnes of CO₂.

Bringing shrimp companies in as partners opens a path toward practices that the market can verify. The main one is certification from the Aquaculture Stewardship Council, a global eco-label for responsibly farmed seafood. Farmers who protect the mangrove gain access to buyers who require it. Sustainability becomes a selling point rather than a cost, or a regulatory obligation.

AUSCEMs and corporate commitments rest on the institutions that give them force. GCF's investment is aimed squarely at that machinery.

Nationally, the Ministry of Environment and Energy (MAE) anchors the AUSCEM system. GCF financing seeded the Mangroves for Climate subaccount, a fund whose returns, not its principal, incentivise communities for protecting the forest.

GCF resources also fund the less visible machinery: training for local justices of the peace and officials handling mangrove complaints, and a blue carbon monitoring system being developed with MAE that would enable Ecuador to count these mangrove forests toward its climate targets.

Locally, the project is helping Decentralised Autonomous Governments fold mangrove protection into their territorial development plans. Initially, autonomous governments — Guayaquil, Machala, and Arenillas— have signed framework agreements to that effect, writing protection into how their cities plan to grow.

This project is what country ownership looks like in practice. The project’s targets align with Ecuador’s own Nationally Determined Contribution, National Adaptation Plan, and its Forest Conservation programme. GCF financing supports the plans the country has set for itself, which is why the project is built for the long game.

Much of the hardest work is still ahead. Restoration is at the very start of its curve. The shrimp industry is still working out terms that serve both business and conservation. Communities are still training and completing consent processes. But the early wins are real, and the foundations are being laid deliberately — community by community, partnership by partnership.

Back at Churute, Arnold wades home with the day’s haul. He’ll be back tomorrow when the tide recedes, working the same roots for more crabs. The mangroves will be there to meet him — as they have been for generations, and as Ecuador is betting they will be for generations more.

Photos:

GCF/Brylle James Galang
Conservation International/Gustavo Crespo
Conservation International/Estefania Bravo