Costs and Benefits of Mangrove Conversion and Restoration

The social and economic arguments for mangrove conservation are based on the role of these forests in providing well-being both to those dependent on their products, and their ecological services. Mangrove forests provide humans directly and indirectly with a range of goods and services including support for coastal and inland fisheries, flood control, breeding grounds for numerous birds and fuelwood. The global area of mangroves, dominated by sixty species, has been decreasing this century through conversion for agriculture, aquaculture and urban settlement, and due to extraction of timber for fuel. In Vietnam, large areas of mangroves have been converted to agriculture and, in particular, to aquaculture, causing ecological disturbance and enhancing instability in the coastal environment (Phan Nguyen Hong and Hoang Thi San, 1993).