The World Wildlife Fund estimates over one-third of the planet's mangroves have already been cleared. They're often the victims of human encroachment and coastal development.

That was nearly the case in the United Arab Emirates. The country's meteoric rise in the late 1970s and 1980s meant that some of its mangrove forests were lost.

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"The pace of development was much faster than any protection could be put on the ground, but luckily because of the commitment from our leadership, starting with Sheikh Zayed, the founding father of the UAE, mangroves were made a priority," explained Al Dhaheri. "Today, for any development to happen in Abu Dhabi, it has to go into a very rigorous permitting and licensing procedure to protect habitats."

The EAD's current priority is to protect the 140 square kilometers of mangrove forests growing along Abu Dhabi's coast. But the agency also helps rehabilitate damaged areas by planting new trees. Al Dhaheri says three million saplings have been planted in the last decade alone.

Using high-resolution satellite imagery, scientists estimate that Abu Dhabi's mangrove coverage has nearly doubled since the 1990s, but the images also revealed that a fifth of the mangroves are in moderate or deteriorating health.

A recent study says that a vast global restoration of forests of all kinds could capture two-thirds of the carbon humans have added to the atmosphere, making it one of the most sustainable and cost-efficient ways of fighting climate change.