Within 50 years the already small extension of the planet’s mangrove forests was reduced by 30-50% to make room for aquaculture. The mangroves in fact occupy the narrow coastal strip of wetlands, swampy, remember just today World Wetlands Day . But mangrove forests are also a treasure trove of immense biodiversity, on which the security and coastal economy of many tropical countries depend, from Indonesia to Ecuador.

But losing them is a snap, because they cover around 152,000 square kilometers . Little more than the surface of Greece, so to speak. According to Daniel Murdyarso, a scholar of the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), one of the leading mangrove experts: “At the current rate of deforestation, in fifty years we will have lost practically all the planet’s mangrove forests”.

Unless what happened in Bedono happens. Driven by the growing demand for shrimp along the coast around the large city of Semarang, a clean sweep was made. Via the mangroves, space for aquaculture. Within a few years, due to the extraction of the underground water, the compacting of the soft soils that the dense roots of the mangroves held, the rising of the sea level, and the loss of resistance that the plants offered to the erosion of the ocean, the village and all the rest have sunk to 1-2 meters below the sea level. The houses have been abandoned. There was a blue revolution, but it didn’t last long.

However, an exploration of the historic images of Google Earth is enough to observe the new revolution, the green one, that of the mangroves. The village was once again populated by plants that have recovered a space where only they resist, of brackish waters, periodically flooded by the tides. Only two women have not left their homes. “I had to raise it by two meters, the sea continues to rise,” explains Pesijah. “I hope I don’t have to leave here.” Of course, she and the other woman have built a new business: they collect fish from the surrounding fishermen to sell it at the market, and they have a small mangrove nursery, which they then sell in neighboring countries.

Because the tragedy that struck Bedono is not unique (it has also been reported in Thailand). Many coastal villages of Java experience disasters similar to the one that struck Pesijah. With the help of the government that promotes the reforestation of areas affected by erosion (even if on the other it promotes cutting in other areas), non-governmental associations, volunteers, several villages now replant mangroves where they had been deforested. In a desperate race for the salvation of the coast, of the natural resources, of the future of their families.

Here the blue revolution has generated profits for investors, of course. the fishermen, however, have been hired for jobs that do little and do not guarantee a future. Apart from a few technologically very advanced industries, ponds for intensive aquaculture are profitable only for a short time. Puddle management is known to leave devastated territories behind. Groundwater becomes brackish (therefore not potable) and coastal fish stocks are near collapse due to the loss of the mangrove nursery function. All this makes coastal communities vulnerable to an impoverished and unproductive environment.