TDA-IME Project Final Report June, 2013 It is important to note, however, that even basic information on the mangrove forest area per country is not known precisely. Thus, our understanding of the distribution and extent of mangrove forests in the world remains inadequate. The two most comprehensive and recent estimates for mangroves, by FAO (2007) and Giri et al., (2010), differ by 12% in their calculation of the global total area of mangroves. Estimates of mangrove area and rate of loss in the TDA-IME Project countries from other sources are shown in Table 4. The great variation in the reported mangrove area data for a number of countries represents a fundamental weakness in knowledge that is undermining the potential for sustainable mangrove management. Notwithstanding the obvious limitations in the accuracy of the various mangrove forest area estimates, the trend in annual loss terms is of great concern, as the data in Table 2 show. (Note: the data have been taken from a single source (FAO, 2007) to reduce the variation evident between studies due to methodological and other differences.) Mangrove forests play a vital role in the health of tropical coastal ecosystems and human wellbeing. Mangroves stabilize shorelines; provide nutrients for the marine environment; and support diverse aquatic life linked to the mangroves through their mangrove habitat associations, life histories and coastal food webs. Mangrove forests also consolidate soft sediments deposited along coasts, reduce soil erosion, and mitigate coastal storm and flood impacts. However, human pressure on coastal ecosystems is often extremely high due to economic development, especially for aquaculture, agriculture, urban and industrial infrastructure, and even tourism. As a result, the rate of conversion and fragmentation of mangrove forest habitat to other land uses over recent decades has been alarming. It is not only the direct provisioning services of mangroves that are being lost, but also their important regulating services. These include coastal erosion and flood control, and mitigation of storm (and even tsunami) impacts. In addition, the vulnerability of mangroves to climate change is a growing concern, while their further loss may have wider negative consequences on marine ecosystems and climate in general (Giri et al., 2010). It is a paradox that the reasons for mangrove loss are so well known (e.g. Alongi, 2002, Van Lavieren al., 2012), as too are the main drivers, namely population growth and human desire to exploit mangroves for short-term economic gain (e.g. Yoschak, 2009), but yet society seems incapable of conserving mangroves as a common good resource that can provide multiple benefits in the longer term. Over and above their widely reported contribution to human well-being and resilience, mangroves may also be particularly valuable for climate change mitigation and adaptation, at least over the next few decades (Macintosh et al., 2011). 12
Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis of Indochina Mangrove Ecosystems
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