In the village of Dado, tucked along the Mono River in southwestern Benin, a ceremony unfolds that looks unlike anything you'd see in a typical conservation project. A miniature effigy called the Zangbéto—representing a respected Vodun deity—is carefully placed on a mangrove tree. The act seals a pact between spirits and the community: no fishing, no woodcutting, no destruction. Anyone who breaks this pact, the villagers believe, faces divine punishment.
This spiritual enforcement has become one of Benin's most powerful tools for protecting its vanishing mangroves, according to Mongabay Africa.
Mangroves are coastal forests with roots that dip into saltwater. They might look scraggly, but they're ecological heavyweights. A single hectare of mangrove can capture up to four times more carbon than the same area of land-based forest, helping to absorb the greenhouse gases driving climate change. Yet Benin's mangroves have been disappearing fast. Between 1995 and 2015, the country lost 29% of its mangrove cover—wiped out by logging, salt production, farming, and urban expansion.
Enter Vodun, an ancient spiritual religion that sees humans as deeply connected to nature. For the last decade, the NGO Eco-Bénin has partnered with Vodun religious leaders to designate certain mangrove areas as sacred. The process begins with a Fâ priest—a spiritual mediator who uses traditional language to ask the spirits for permission to protect a site. If the spirits consent, the area becomes off-limits.
"All our resources, all our wealth comes from the water," said Isidore Jinou, a 57-year-old advertising director who grew up as the son of a fisherman along the Mono River. Jinou was initiated into the Vodun religion 14 years ago. "There is a certain communion between mangroves and us humans. So it has a soul. We consider it a living being that we must not destroy or mistreat."
In that time, this partnership has preserved roughly 500 hectares—more than 1,235 acres—of mangroves along the Beninese coastline, including the Bouche du Roy estuary, one of the richest mangrove ecosystems in the region.
The approach is gaining official recognition. Benin formally recognized Vodun as a national religion in 1996, and now the government actively incorporates these spiritual systems into its environmental strategy. Adjakou Akoutan Adjinda, who leads the government agency responsible for water, forests, and hunting, said the collaboration between state authorities and traditional spiritual structures is key.
"I think the two are complementary," Adjinda told Mongabay. "The local authority, which embodies the public force, is involved. The communities, through their chiefdoms and their deities, are involved. This will allow us to take all aspects into account and hope for better results for the conservation of mangroves in Benin."
In other words, the old ways and the new are working together—and for the mangroves, that partnership is exactly what the spirits ordered.