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In April 1956, a converted oil tanker called the Ideal X left the port of Newark, New Jersey, bound for Houston. On its deck were fifty-eight large metal boxes. The voyage attracted little attention at the time, yet it is now often described as the beginning of a revolution in world trade. The man behind it, a trucking entrepreneur named Malcolm McLean, had grasped a simple idea: goods could be moved far more efficiently if they were packed once, at the factory, and not unpacked again until they reached their destination.

Before containers, most cargo was handled as “break-bulk”: sacks, barrels, crates and bundles of every size, loaded and unloaded piece by piece. A single ship could carry many thousands of separate items, each of which had to be counted, lifted and stowed. A cargo ship might spend almost as long in port as it did at sea, while teams of dockworkers carried goods between the quay and the hold. The process was slow, labour-intensive and costly, and theft and damage were common. For many goods, loading and unloading made up a large share of the total cost of shipping, so that distance mattered less than the number of times cargo had to be handled.

The container did not succeed immediately. Ports, railways and trucking firms had invested heavily in the old methods, and dockworkers' unions, fearing for their members' jobs, resisted the change. Equally serious was the absence of common standards. Early shipping companies used boxes of different sizes and with different fittings, which meant that a container belonging to one company could not easily be carried by another's ships or lifted by its cranes. It was only in the late 1960s, after lengthy negotiations, that international standards for container dimensions and corner fittings began to be widely adopted.

Once standardisation was achieved, the effects were dramatic. Specialised ships carrying thousands of containers could be loaded and unloaded in a fraction of the time previously required, and the same box could move from ship to train to truck without its contents being touched. The cost of moving goods across oceans fell sharply. Ports that had once needed hundreds of workers to unload a single vessel could now do the job with a small crew operating giant cranes. Manufacturers no longer needed to be located near their customers, and supply chains began to stretch across continents, with components made in one country, assembled in a second and sold in a third.

The benefits were not evenly shared. Container ships required deep water, large areas of flat land for storing boxes, and good road and rail connections, which many historic city-centre docks could not provide. In cities such as London and New York, traditional docks declined as new container terminals were built elsewhere, and employment in port work fell steeply. Neighbourhoods that had depended on the waterfront for generations experienced long periods of economic decline. Some of these areas have since been redeveloped as housing, offices and leisure districts, but the change took decades.

Economists still debate how much of the growth in world trade since the 1960s should be attributed to the container, as opposed to falling tariffs and other developments. What is less disputed is that the humble metal box changed not only how goods travel but where they are made. In that sense, its influence extends well beyond the docks: much of the modern global economy has been shaped by a technology that most consumers never think about.

Along tropical and subtropical coastlines, in the narrow zone between high and low tide, grow forests in conditions that few other trees could survive. Mangroves tolerate salt water, waterlogged mud that contains little oxygen, and flooding by the tide once or twice a day. They manage this through a range of adaptations. Some species filter out most of the salt at their roots; others excrete it through their leaves. Many produce aerial roots that rise above the mud and allow the tree to take in oxygen directly from the air. Others produce seeds that begin to grow while still attached to the parent tree, so that they can take root quickly when they drop into the mud.

For much of the twentieth century, mangroves were widely seen as unproductive swamps, and large areas were cleared for agriculture, aquaculture and coastal development. Shrimp farming alone was responsible for extensive losses in parts of South-East Asia and Latin America. Only relatively recently has the value of these forests been widely recognised, and it is a value that extends far beyond the trees themselves.

The dense network of roots acts as a natural barrier against the sea. As waves pass through a mangrove forest, they lose energy, so the water reaching the shore is calmer than it would otherwise be. The roots also trap fine sediment carried by rivers and tides, which helps to stabilise the shoreline and reduce erosion. Studies after storms in several countries have reported that villages behind healthy mangroves suffered less damage than nearby areas where the forests had been removed, although the degree of protection depends on the width of the forest and the strength of the storm. Unlike a concrete sea wall, a mangrove forest can repair itself and, as sediment collects among its roots, may even gain height as sea levels rise, provided the rise is gradual.

Mangroves are also remarkably efficient at storing carbon. Because their waterlogged soils contain little oxygen, dead leaves and roots decompose very slowly, and organic material accumulates over centuries. Per hectare, mangrove forests can hold several times as much carbon as many tropical forests on dry land, most of it in the soil rather than in the trees. When mangroves are cleared, much of this stored carbon may be released into the atmosphere. For this reason, mangroves have become a focus for programmes that aim to reduce emissions by protecting natural ecosystems.

The forests support coastal livelihoods as well. Their sheltered waters serve as nurseries for many species of fish and shellfish, which spend their early lives among the roots before moving to the open sea, and local communities harvest timber, honey and other products. Restoration projects have multiplied in response, but with mixed results. Planting seedlings is straightforward; ensuring that they survive is not. Projects that planted trees where mangroves had never grown, such as on mudflats that are too low in the tidal zone, have often failed, whereas those that restored the natural flow of water to former mangrove sites have generally been more successful.

Mangroves are not a complete substitute for engineered defences, and they cannot protect every coast. But they offer a combination of benefits that no sea wall can match, and their protection is increasingly seen as a sound investment rather than an obstacle to development. Increasingly, engineers are combining the two, placing belts of mangroves in front of lower sea walls.