Roots against the tide by Brea Willis

Every year the International Day for the Conservation of the Mangrove Ecosystem arrives in global silence and often ignorance. Mangroves are among the world's greatest natural allies. They soften the violence of hurricanes, shelter fisheries, lock away astonishing quantities of carbon and stand as living fortresses against rising seas. Yet this year's observance unfolds in an era when environmental reality itself has become a political battlefield, particularly in the United States, where Donald Trump's movement has elevated climate scepticism into something approaching official ideology.

That transformation should alarm anyone who cares about more than trees. Mangroves cannot vote. They cannot hire lobbyists. They cannot finance election campaigns or flood social media with conspiracy theories. They simply perform their work, year after year, reducing flood damage, supporting biodiversity and helping stabilise a warming planet. Ironically, these forests accomplish more practical patriotism than many politicians who wrap themselves in national flags while dismissing the very science that could protect their own coastal communities.

Trump's political legacy has been to redefine expertise as elitism and scientific evidence as partisan opinion whenever facts become inconvenient. Climate change became not a measurable phenomenon but another front in America's endless culture war. The tragedy is that carbon dioxide does not recognise political affiliations. Storm surges do not ask whether a homeowner voted Republican or Democrat before swallowing a coastline.

The influence extends well beyond one man. Much of the MAGA movement has embraced an identity built around rejecting institutions, whether universities, scientific agencies or international environmental agreements. Doubt is no longer a method of inquiry; it has become a badge of belonging. In such an atmosphere, protecting mangroves becomes strangely controversial simply because conservation itself has been painted as the language of ideological opponents.

Then comes Robert F. Kennedy Jr., whose public profile has long rested upon challenging scientific consensus in multiple fields. While he has presented himself as an environmental advocate in some contexts, his broader embrace of scientific scepticism has contributed to a political climate where trust in evidence continues to erode. Selective belief in science is no less dangerous than outright denial. Scientific understanding is not a buffet where uncomfortable conclusions can simply be left on the table.

Meanwhile, nature continues keeping score with remarkable indifference. Sea levels rise. Coastal erosion accelerates. Saltwater intrudes into farmland. Tropical storms grow more destructive. Every hectare of mangrove lost makes vulnerable communities just a little less secure. Every restoration project postponed increases future costs that taxpayers will eventually shoulder, regardless of ideology.

There is also something deeply revealing about the politics of mangroves. They represent long-term thinking in an age addicted to immediate gratification. A politician seeks applause at the next rally. A mangrove forest quietly invests in the next century. One pursues electoral cycles; the other sustains ecosystems across generations. Democracies struggle when leaders think only until the next election rather than the next generation.

The irony is almost unbearable. Many conservative communities most sceptical of climate science inhabit precisely the coastlines that benefit enormously from healthy mangrove ecosystems and broader environmental protection. The oceans are not interested in political slogans. Physics cannot be persuaded by campaign speeches. The atmosphere has never once checked a party registration card.

International days of recognition often risk becoming ceremonial exercises, producing polished speeches while forests continue disappearing. But the conservation of mangroves deserves more than symbolic declarations. It requires governments willing to treat science as guidance rather than ideology, citizens prepared to distinguish evidence from propaganda and leaders courageous enough to admit that nature cannot be negotiated with.

The roots of mangroves hold shorelines together. Our democracies need similarly deep roots in reason, evidence and intellectual honesty. Without them, both our politics and our coastlines will continue to erode together.