Year: 2026 | Month: May | Volume: 13 | Issue: 5 | Pages: 168-183
DOI: https://doi.org/10.52403/ijrr.20260513
Environmental Ethics, Blue Carbon, and Adaptive Governance in Mangrove Social-Ecological Systems: An Updated Integrative Review of Conservation, Restoration, Monitoring, and Coastal Livelihoods
Rustam Anwar1, Abdul Haris Panai2, Sukirman Rahim3, Marini Susanti Hamidun4
1Doctoral Program in Environmental Science, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo, Gorontalo, Indonesia
2,3,4Postgraduate Program, Universitas Negeri Gorontalo, Gorontalo, Indonesia
Corresponding Author: Rustam Anwar
ABSTRACT
Mangrove scholarship has moved beyond descriptive accounts of ecosystem loss toward a more demanding agenda that links ecological diagnosis, restoration design, legal protection, blue-carbon policy, monitoring innovation, and questions of justice. Building on the supplied review corpus and the updated records integrated into the user’s files, this article synthesizes how recent literature reframes mangrove systems as ethical social-ecological infrastructures rather than as purely biophysical habitats. The evidence consistently shows that mangroves support biodiversity, fisheries, shoreline stability, carbon storage, and locally embedded livelihoods, yet outcomes remain uneven because restoration, protection, and development decisions are often pursued without adequate attention to tenure, participation, hydrology, monitoring quality, or distributional fairness. Newer studies deepen this picture by showing that legal recognition is widespread but uneven in implementation; that blue-carbon framing can elevate mangroves in national policy while also producing tensions around compensation, restriction, and benefit allocation; and that restoration succeeds only when species choice, geomorphology, salinity, tidal connectivity, and local incentives are matched to place. Methodologically, the field is expanding from classical inventories and stakeholder surveys toward satellite time series, UAV photogrammetry, deep learning, phenocams, and geospatial prioritization, enabling more transparent and adaptive management. This review argues that top-tier mangrove scholarship should move beyond single-objective narratives and instead evaluate success through ecological fit, institutional legitimacy, livelihood justice, and accountable monitoring. It proposes an integrative framework in which environmental ethics is not an external add-on but the normative logic linking conservation, restoration, climate mitigation, and coastal resilience.
Keywords: mangrove environmental ethics; mangrove governance; blue carbon justice; mangrove restoration; remote sensing for mangroves; community-based coastal management; coastal resilience
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