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Coastal wetlands, including mangrove forests, salt marshes, and seagrass meadows, have gained increasing attention from climate scientists in recent years for their disproportionate ability to store carbon relative to their land area. Unlike terrestrial forests, which store most of their carbon in above-ground biomass such as trunks and branches, coastal wetlands lock carbon primarily in waterlogged soils, where low oxygen levels slow the decomposition process dramatically and allow organic material to accumulate over centuries rather than decades. Some studies estimate that, per hectare, these ecosystems can sequester carbon at rates several times higher than mature tropical rainforests, a finding that has prompted several governments to reconsider previously overlooked wetland restoration as a relatively low-cost climate mitigation strategy. Beyond their carbon storage capacity, coastal wetlands provide a range of additional benefits, including buffering nearby communities from storm surges, filtering agricultural runoff before it reaches the ocean, and serving as nursery habitats for numerous commercially important fish species. Despite these advantages, global wetland area has declined significantly over the past century, driven primarily by coastal development, aquaculture expansion, and upstream dam construction that alters the natural flow of sediment these ecosystems depend on to maintain their elevation relative to rising sea levels. Restoration efforts, while increasingly well-funded in some regions, face persistent technical challenges, since transplanted mangrove seedlings and marsh grasses often fail to establish successfully if water salinity, tidal patterns, or sediment composition at the restoration site differ even modestly from the conditions of the original habitat. Conservation organizations now generally recommend protecting existing wetlands as a funding priority over restoring degraded ones, arguing that prevention remains far more reliable and cost-effective than attempting to rebuild these complex ecosystems once they have been lost.