Read the passage below carefully:
While mangrove restoration projects along the Gulf of Guinea are frequently praised by international environmental agencies primarily for their capacity to sequester blue carbon, their most critical socio-economic contribution lies in protecting indigenous artisanal fisheries from escalating coastal erosion and storm surges. Recent field studies across the Niger Delta reveal that intact mangrove ecosystems function as irreplaceable nursery habitats for nearly eighty percent of commercially harvested local fish species. Furthermore, coastal communities that actively maintained natural mangrove buffers suffered significantly less infrastructure damage during recent seasonal flooding compared to areas dominated by artificial sea walls. Although carbon credit monetization schemes offer potential long-term financial windfalls, local economic resilience depends far more immediately on the tangible biomass protection and shoreline stabilization that living mangroves continuously provide. Consequently, environmental policymakers who prioritize international carbon trading markets over local ecological maintenance risk undermining the immediate food security and livelihood stability of coastal populations.
Which of the following statements best expresses the main idea of the passage?
- Living mangroves primarily sustain coastal livelihoods and food security through shoreline protection and fishery support rather than serving merely as carbon sequestration sites.Answer
- BIntact mangrove ecosystems across the Niger Delta function as nursery habitats for nearly eighty percent of local commercial fish species.
- CCarbon credit monetization schemes are fundamentally ineffective and should be entirely abolished by international environmental agencies.
- DArtificial sea walls provide far superior infrastructure protection against extreme seasonal flooding than natural mangrove buffers.