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  • Review Article
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Conserving seagrass ecosystems to meet global biodiversity and climate goals

Nature Reviews Biodiversity volume 1, pages 150–165 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Despite being relatively neglected until the early 2000s, seagrass ecosystems are now recognized as critical habitats supporting biodiversity and ecosystem services including carbon sequestration, coastal protection and food supply. In this Review, we discuss the structure and function of seagrass beds, the ways that they support biodiversity and ecosystem services, their dominant threats, and the most promising conservation and restoration opportunities. Seagrass ecosystems support biologically diverse communities, and food web integrity within these communities can reciprocally maintain healthy seagrass ecosystems. Numerous anthropogenic pressures caused persistent declines of 1% to 2% per year in global extent during the twentieth century, but a range of policies, primarily focused on reducing coastal water pollution, have attenuated or reversed losses in some regions. Uncertainty about the global and regional distributions of seagrasses and their trajectories, as well as the high costs of restoration, undermine conservation progress. An escalation in research effort is required to improve projections of seagrass responses to climate change and to identify cost-effective and scalable restoration approaches.

Key points

  • In shallow coastal waters, seagrasses form meadows that persist through clonal growth and, in some species, sporadic sexual reproduction. The configuration of the meadows reflects seagrass health, with patchy landscapes indicating biological or chemical disturbance.

  • Seagrass meadows are critical habitats for biodiversity, supporting 121 megafauna species of conservation concern and 746 reported fish species contributing over 20% of fishery landings.

  • Seagrass meadows have an estimated global extent of at least 277,000 square kilometres. Owing to several human pressures, seagrass extent has declined at an annual rate of about 1–2% over the past century. Five per cent of seagrass species are currently listed as endangered.

  • The ecosystem services provided by seagrass are valued at US $6.4 trillion annually. Awareness of this value has propelled efforts to conserve and restore seagrass to deliver climate mitigation, climate adaptation and biodiversity benefits.

  • In many locations, seagrass ecosystems are on a path to recovery owing to water quality improvement, area-based protection and restoration. Of known seagrass area, 23.9% is now included in marine protected areas, and nearly 2,000 seagrass restoration projects are reported.

  • Future research priorities include using novel technologies to complete gaps in the global inventory of seagrass ecosystems, and to control seagrass reproductive output and design cost-effective, scalable restoration techniques. Management plans should focus on delivering balanced seagrass food webs.

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Fig. 1: Milestones and monetary investment.
Fig. 2: Seagrass supports biodiversity and ecosystem services.
Fig. 3: Known global seagrass extent and regional trends.

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Acknowledgements

C.M.D. was supported by King Abdullah University of Science and Technology through baseline funding. O.S. was supported by projects RYC2019-027073-I and PIE HOLOCENO 20213AT014 funded by MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and FEDER. E.T.A. was supported from the ARTEMIS project (Interreg Euro-MED 0200867).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Marine Science Program, Biological and Environmental Science and Engineering Division (BESE), King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

    Carlos M. Duarte & Alexandra Steckbauer

  2. Institute of Oceanography, Hellenic Centre for Marine Research (HCMR), Heraklion, Greece

    Eugenia T. Apostolaki

  3. Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Blanes, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Blanes, Spain

    Oscar Serrano

  4. Seagrass Ecosystem Research Group, Swansea University, Swansea, UK

    Richard K. F. Unsworth

  5. Project Seagrass, Bridgend, UK

    Richard K. F. Unsworth

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C.M.D. designed and coordinated the article. The authors contributed equally to all other aspects of the article.

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Related links

Global Coral R&D Accelerator Platform: www.CORDAP.org

Green Climate Fund: www.greenclimate.fund

Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework: www.cbd.int/gbf

Seagrass Breakthrough: https://www.dugongseagrass.org/media/2024/11/Leaflet_2030-Seagrass-Breakthrough_version5.pdf

UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center’s Global Distribution of Seagrasses: https://data.unep-wcmc.org/datasets/7

UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center’s Restoration Funding Data Set: https://restorationfunders.com

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Duarte, C.M., Apostolaki, E.T., Serrano, O. et al. Conserving seagrass ecosystems to meet global biodiversity and climate goals. Nat. Rev. Biodivers. 1, 150–165 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s44358-025-00028-x

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