Sustainable development of mangroves: Fid-Bau Portal

Sustainable development of mangroves

Pons, L.J. / Fiselier, J.L.

AbstractMangroves cover extensive wetland areas in the tropics and have a very diverse appearance resulting from different environmental conditions. Long neglected as a valuable natural resources, mangrove development has now gained momentum and large tracts of mangroves have been reclaimed for agriculture, converted into aquacultural ponds and deforested by local populations and national and multinational timber companies, without sufficient and wise reforestation. These forms of development are often unsustainable, causing irreversible damage, partly because of irrevocable physical processes and total loss of valuable natural resources with inherent opportunities for beneficial sustainable utilization. Often insufficient knowledge of the dynamics of this ecosystem by the local people, the government and international agencies has caused unintended destruction. The purpose of this paper is to extract and distil from the contributed papers those aspects of mangrove functioning and utilization that determine “people's role in wetland, e.g. mangrove, management”.