Indonesia holds 23.5% of total mangrove worldwide, amounted for 3.5 million hectares of mangroves in 2021. With 92 diverse species, Indonesian mangrove stored 3.1 billion of carbons, wherein equivalent to 2.5 billion vehicles greenhouse gases emission annually. However, Indonesia’s mangrove losses more than 50,000 hectares of mangrove every year , in Business as Usual (BAU) model, over 700,000 hectares of mangroves will be lost in the next two decades. Initially, Giesen (1993) and Ministry of Forestry in Geospatial Information Agency (2012) estimated that 4.2 million hectares before Anthropocene in 19th century, where the main degradation drivers are: 1) Brackish water pond due to fish and shrimp farming intensification; 2) Timber exploitation; and 3) Palm oil plantation. Hence, Indonesia Government has declared the National Strategy for Mangrove Ecosystem Management (SNPEM) and issued Presidential Regulation no. 73 to re-establish a National Mangrove Working Group (Kelompok Kerja Mangrove Nasional, KKMN) by setting an ambitious target of rehabilitating 600,000 hectares of mangroves by 2024 .

Our focus: intensify Associated Mangrove Aquaculture (AMA)
Target: 1) Water security (SDG 6) and nutrient cycling (hydrogen, nitrogen and phosphorous species) 2) Circular economy: income generation from waste as a means of sustainable aquaculture.
Advantage compared to wastewater treatment plant (WWTP): can be coupled with high-value farmings, such as crabs, mussels; zero to low maintenance (no aeration and microbes maintenance); and can be further developed to education and recreation with interpretive signage, walking and bike paths and green space.
Main activity: mimic natural inundated wetlands to treat wastewater treatment from fish and shrimp farming and further can be developed for urban wastewater. Mangrove purifying ecosystem sequester wastewater and fertilizer runoff as phosphorous source and ammonium, as nitrogen source. In mangrove- aquaculture coupling system, the mangrove growth depends on the aquaculture wastewater with stimulation of microbial nitrification and denitrification, with different efficiency among species and aquaculture type, i.e. R. mangle treating shrimp ponds (79%), A. germinans (63%) L. racemosa (50%) in silvofishery system, and A. corniculatum (63-88%) in aquaculture pondsxlii.
Measurement: Feed Conversion Ratio (FCR), feed saving, and additional revenue stream; and mangrove bio-filtering role: Chemical Oxygen Demand (COD), NH4, NO3-, NO2- level.