TDA-IME Project Final Report June, 2013 Prioritization of the issues and threats to natural resources in an international waters 21 area, based on their relative significance; Identification of the causes and the jurisdictional origins of those causes for each issue and threat (i.e., identification of which issues and threats are purely national and which are transboundary); Identification and evaluation of options for intervention, primarily to address the causes of environmental degradation and threats. This TDA-IME Project Final Report does cover each of these outputs/outcomes to some extent, but it has a stronger focus on scientific evaluation of the environmental issues and threats facing mangrove ecosystems, plus the causes of mangrove loss/degradation, than on evaluation of the options for intervention. This emphasis reflects the project’s stated aims to promote knowledge-based information exchange and regional cooperation, and to provide the scientific basis for developing a future SAP that would address the priority issues facing transboundary mangrove ecosystems management. This latter step will require a much wider consultation with national stakeholders than was possible within the project’s scope. Although Pernetta and Brewers (2012) consider that the evaluation of potential interventions should be included within the TDA, rather than being left to the SAP formulation stage, they also note that such evaluations, especially the calculation of the relative costs and benefits of different options, can be rather resource intensive. The TDA-IME Project analysis is also not typical of other TDAs conducted in the region because it deals with a single, intertidal ecosystem “the mangroves”, which are limited to the narrow coastal fringe of the focal sub-region, rather than being an international waters entity in senso stricto. Thus, this report should be regarded more as a supplement to the TDAs already available for the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea LMEs, both of which include mangrove loss/degradation as one of the major issues they address. While the TDA-IME Project has tried to make this report supportive of the TDAs for these GEF grant-supported LMEs, it has also sought to make the TDA findings for mangroves highly relevant for potential uptake by other initiatives and programs in the Southeast Asia region, such as Mangroves for the Future, PEMSEA and SEAFDEC. The potential for wider application of the TDA process outside the GEF framework is also regarded as a desirable development by Pernetta and Bewers (2012). The TDA-IME Project’s scientific analysis focused on climate change and mangroves, because this is an emerging issue that is not covered by the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea TDAs. It is consistent with the macro-level approach taken by the project, because climate change is a concern for all the countries of Indochina. Other gaps in scientific knowledge are also identified, together with an analysis of how to apply the considerable existing knowledge about mangrove ecosystems more effectively to improve coastal area management; that is, how to bridge the “science to policy” gap? Relevance of the Approach The TDA process, in senso latro, actually suits mangroves very well because they exist as transboundary ecosystems on several geographical and political scales. At a local scale, mangrove-fringed estuaries, lagoons or bays are shared commonly by two or more provinces or districts within a country (e.g. the Welu River Estuary, a large mangrove-fringed coastal lagoon bordered by Chantaburi and Trat provinces in eastern Thailand). Mangroves also form single ecosystems bordering the coastlines between neighbouring countries, e.g. along the Melaka Straits between Malaysia and Indonesia (Sumatra); the Kuraburi Estuary between Thailand and Myanmar, and the Straits of Johor between Malaysia and Singapore. Mangrove forests are also the major coastal habitat formation within the two Large Marine Ecosystems of Indochina, the Bay of Bengal and South China Sea, each of which is bordered by eight countries that together constitute about 42% of the world’s mangrove forests by area and 70% by mangrove plant species.
Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis of Indochina Mangrove Ecosystems
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