Carbon pools and multiple benefits

Plate 2: Fish smoking in Cameroon

Tourism

Shoreline protection

The touristic value of mangrove sites was evaluated wherever visitor data were available from local governments and businesses. Data were collected from official records kept by national park authorities.

Data was non-existent in the sites on records of incidence and expenditure on disasters. Consequently, a damage cost avoided method was used to calculate the costs of all infrastructure and amenities including houses, roads, buildings, telecommunications, water and electricity within a 500m band in the mangrove sites as areas likely to be affected by any impact due to mangrove destruction. Infrastructure was classified into permanent and semi-permanent housing, roads, institutional (all equipment, assets materials belonging to a given institution), electricity (transmission poles, equipment, etc.), water (portable), tele- communication (transmission poles, station and equipment). A replacement method was also employed to calculate the cost per unit area of replacing mangroves with seawalls, and this was compared to the damage cost avoided method. Acontingentmethod, combinedwith structured questionnaire and observation techniques was used to value mangrove wood products. The amount of wood used by a household 1 in the area was estimated as well as estimates of turnover rates by members of the household for cooking and fish smoking activities. The data was then used to estimate annual mangrove wood requirements per household. Mangrove wood products (e.g. firewood and building)

1 A household was defined in this case as people irrespec- tive of families, sleeping under one roof or living in same house.

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