Awards for draining mangrove delta lands (6)
I believe the answer is:
medals
'awards' is the definition.
(I know this)
'draining mangrove delta lands' is the wordplay.
'draining' means to remove the middle letters (I've seen 'drained' mean this).
'delta lands' becomes 'dals' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'mangrove' with its centre removed is 'me'.
'me'+'dals'='MEDALS'
'for' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for medals that I've seen before include "Military decorations" , "Small metal discs as awards - think Olympic games" , "Awards for damsel" , "Metal discs given as awards" , "Gongs" .)