Just 60 miles south of the vibrant coastal Indian city of Mumbai in Maharashtra, two distinct worlds emerge. The bustling city — full of skyscrapers, restaurants, hotels, shopping districts, countless tuk-tuks, and modern cars — falls away as unpaved roads, palm trees, goats, cows pulling carts, and small open-air markets and restaurants come into view.

In the Raigad district, Alibaug connects Mumbai to a network of rivers branching off of the Arabian Sea. The coastal area is home to 21,000 hectares of mangrove forests, one of Earth’s most natural protectors against the impacts of climate change, which include unpredictable monsoons, rising tides, cyclones — or hurricanes — and even tsunamis, while also acting as carbon sinks that absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and store it in their soil, plants, and other sediment, known as blue carbon.