Scientists' warning on safeguarding seagrass meadows

Numerous global initiatives and policy frameworks, including blue carbon strategies, biodiversity targets, and ecosystem restoration commitments, highlight the need to conserve and restore seagrasses, yet losses continue to accelerate across many regions. Building on three decades of “Scientists' Warning” papers, we deliver a focused warning rather than another exhaustive review: we argue that the future of seagrasses depends less on further documenting declines and more on (i) prioritizing the protection and conservation of existing meadows, which remain threatened primarily by local stressors such as declining water quality, anchoring, dredging, aquaculture, fisheries interactions, and altered hydrodynamics, (ii) explicitly treating cumulative and interacting stressors as the analytical unit of management, and (iii) closing four operational gaps: standardized global mapping, transparent literature and evidence synthesis, scalable restoration grounded in biotechnology, genetic and microbial science, and governance frameworks capable of translating blue carbon and biodiversity commitments into effective protection and restoration actions. We synthesize evidence across bioregions to identify common patterns of degradation, propose a practical framework that organizes threats according to their physical, chemical, biological, and climatic origins while explicitly accounting for cumulative effects, and outline a prioritized research and policy agenda. Our central message is operational: halting seagrass loss over the next decade is achievable, but only if conservation and political efforts focus first on safeguarding existing meadows and addressing the dominant local drivers of decline rather than relying primarily on climate mitigation potential.