Factors influencing community participation in mangroves restoration: A contingent valuation analysis

Background

This paper analyzes the willingness of a household to participate and pay for the benefits of a mangrove restoration program in the West Coast of India. In the second half of the twentieth century, this region has been threatened by shrimp cultivation, industrial development and hydroelectric projects, which overall made mangroves recede substantially.

Conclusions & Takeaways

The authors concluded that every restoration project should be paired up with substitution measures that accompany the project’s desired outcomes (e.g. provide cookstoves in exchange for mangrove restoration). Moreover, mangrove management committees should be composed of members of castes, and gender groupings that are proportionately representative of the village the committee is from. Any proposed restoration plan should always include the participation in women, wince their study showed that women were more altruistic-driven and that their underlying motivation in the restoration program were not only economic benefits The paper concludes stressing that in any scenario, the value of the restoration project would be much greater among locals if the plan explicitly considers species that serve specific consumptive and non-consumptive needs of the user groups.