Southeast Asia has many shrimp raising ponds raising shrimp for export to Japan. Some of these businesses have raised shrimp in excessively high concentrations, in order to increase efficiency. Moreover, to prevent diseases from occurring as a result of overpopulation in their shrimp ponds, shrimp farmers mix antibiotics in with shrimp feed. This merely breeds antibiotic- resistant bacteria, however, rendering the shrimp ponds unusable. Farmers then abandon these ponds and shift their operations to another area. To secure sites for their shrimp ponds the farmers have cut down mangrove forests progressively along seacoasts, and these forests are disappearing one after another. The extent of this damage is amply revealed by the photographs of the Benoa Gulf, off the coast of Bali Indonesia, taken by the global surveying satellite Landsat.

The Japanese government is cooperating with Indonesia in preserving and regenerating the mangrove forests, as a priority national policy. From December of 1992, Japan has been involved in a project to preserve, regenerate and use mangrove forests in former shrimp pond sites in the Benoa Gulf, as well as sites where natural forests have been cleared, such as in Lombok Island.

Mangroves have long been used for charcoal, firewood and construction. There are over 50 major species of mangroves, including Rhizophora mucronata, Rhizophora apiculata, and Bruguiera gymnorrhiza. Bali alone has 30 species, all of which grow in slightly different locations, and have slightly different growth patterns. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and Indonesia's Department of Forestry have been participating jointly in the "The Development of Sustainable Mangrove Management Project" along the Benoa Gulf. Experts from JICA have continued to make thorough tests of which species are suited to which locations, from sprouts through forests; now, young mangrove trees are growing in abandoned shrimp raising ponds.

Young mangrove trees growing in a former shrimp raising pond (near the Benoa Gulf in Bali, Indonesia)