Crabshack floating restaurant thriving above mangrove trees.

In 2008, Dickson Mazinga was a chef in a five-star hotel restaurant in the Kenyan coastal town of Watamu. He quit his job to join young people from Dabaso village on the outskirts of Watamu to protect the mangrove forest. The forest was disappearing from log harvesting for home construction.

Today, Mr. Mazinga runs a high-end restaurant that hangs on top of mangrove trees, well known as a significant absorber of carbon dioxide among all trees in the world. The restaurant has substantially enhanced the forests, along with his life and the lives of many others.

Mr. Mazinga is a founding member of a group of 47 young volunteers in Dabaso village who were concerned with the destruction of the mangrove forest that had been flourishing on the shores of the Indian Ocean. They dedicated themselves to educating the villagers on the critical role the mangroves played in providing a habitat for marine life, especially at breeding stages.

'We worked as volunteers for seven years,' says Mr. Mazinga. 'Then some of our partners from Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KMFRI) asked us to initiate a project that would generate income. They valued our work and its positive results. They did not want to risk losing members who might seek paid employment elsewhere.'

The group was amazed at local hotels' demand for crab meat. This discovery led members to explore opening their own restaurant. Through their experience and work with other hotel business owners, they grew confident that they could open and run a profitable restaurant - and that is what they did.

KAMFRI showed the volunteers how crabs breed under the mangroves. Mr. Mazinga says that his group was surprised to learn how many different marine species leave the broader ocean and come to hide from predators under the mangrove trees during their breeding season.

The experts at KAMFRI taught us to harvest baby crabs and grow them for the market,' Mazinga says. 'They helped us build suitable cages under the mangrove to start our crab farm. As soon as we started, we had a ready market in the hotels in the coastal town.

Kenyan coastal villagers are cashing in on carbon credits.

Haji Abdikarim

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