Local vulnerability as an advantage mangrove fore

Authors: Marion Glaser Uta Berger Rosangela Macedo

Publish Date: 2003/10/15

Volume: 3, Issue: 4, Pages: 162-172

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Abstract

When ecosystems are threatened or scientific knowledge of the effects of human action is uncertain legislative prohibition is often adopted This paper examines how the criminalization of mangrove tree use affects ecosystem management outcomes We explore the biological economic and social sustainability effects of the legal ban on mangrove use on the coast of Bragança Pará north Brazil There are two main categories of mangrove users in this area firstly local subsistence users who also derive some financial incomes from mangrove sale Their mangrove use is intertwined with household livelihood strategies and they display selfinitiated planning and action towards sustainable management secondly more “mobile” purely commercial users who are responsible for most commercial mangrove exploitation and who employ regionally sequential predatory resource exploitation strategies These users are typically based at some distance from the exploited areas and share neither local livelihood strategies nor sustainability agendas The current outright ban on any utilization of mangrove flora seems to undermine biological sustainability is economically inefficient and generates normative insecurity conflict and social polarization The ineffectiveness of the outright legal prohibition of mangrove tree use in terms of sustainable coastal management leads us to investigate alternative management options We suggest that the legalization of local mangrove utilization and the strengthening of local users’ rights and responsibilities to control outsiders in a comanagement framework as proposed in the Brazilian extractive reserves RESEX approach is most likely to advance ecologically economically and socially sustainable mangrove management It is demonstrated that a legal recognition of local entitlements to mangrove trees would reduce social vulnerability and therefore move forest management outcomes into more desirable directionsMarion Glaser studied Economics and Political Science at the University of Cologne Germany the London School of Economics and Political Science UK and obtained her MSc in Development Studies and her PhD in Rural Sociology from the University of Bath UK Longterm technical cooperation work in agriculture forest management and social planning in Bangladesh and Belize followed Her focus on the human use of natural resources continues at the Center for Tropical Marine Ecology ZMT at the University of Bremen where she is the coordinator of the BrazilianGerman socioeconomic research group in the Mangrove Dynamics and Management MADAM programme Current work focuses on participatory planning and transdisciplinary sustainability analysis in natural resource managementUta Berger graduated as an electrical engineer from the Technical University of Dresden She then became a scientific staff member at the pharmaceutical/biological faculty of the FriedrichSchillerUniversity in Jena Department of Theoretical Ecology where she obtained her PhD in chemistry Since 1996 she has been head of the study group “Theoretical Ecology/Modelling” with the MADAM Programme at the ZMT at the University of Bremen Germany and has undertaken a wide range of teaching assignments and research in this fieldRosangela Macedo graduated as a forester from the Faculdade de Ciências Agrárias do Pará FCAP in Belém Pará and concluded postgraduate work on rural household strategies and sustainable development at the Federal University of Pará in the Departamento de Estudos sobre Desenvolvimento Sustentãvel da Amazônia/Núcleo de Estudos sobre Agricultura Familiar DAZ/NEAF She has undertaken research assistance assignments on forest management planning participatory diagnostic and forestry inventory work and is currently preparing for further postgraduate studyThe research was conducted under the Brazilian–German Scientific Cooperation Agreement and financed by the German Federal Ministry for Education Science Research and Technology BMBF as part of the programme “Research Focus on the Ecology of Tropical Coastal Areas Mangrove Management and Dynamics” no 03F0154A This is MADAM publication No 64 We thank Ulf Mehlig Gesche Krause Virginia Burkett and one anonymous reviewer for their constructive comments

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