Participatory ecosystem service mapping to enhance community-based mangrove rehabilitation and management in Demak, Indonesia

Abstract

Assessment of mangrove ecosystem services (ES) is essential to understand and manage the contribution of these ecosystems to the well-being of local communities. They are the primary beneficiaries but their experience, knowledge, and information are frequently ignored in ES assessment and mapping. In this study, a participatory resource mapping (PRM) approach was applied using local knowledge and experience to analyze geo-referenced information on mangrove ecosystem services. Local communities were involved from the beginning in method selection, application, evaluation, and verification. This “inclusive participatory ES mapping” was conducted in two villages (Bedono and Timbulsloko, Central Java, Indonesia) from 2014 to 2015. Participants representing different community elements were involved in the mapping process. They first created a historical map of the situation in their villages roughly between 1980 and 1999 (before rehabilitation) and then described the subsequent environmental changes. The mapping exercise also documented different mangrove resources that are utilized by communities and identified key areas, such as harvesting zones, biodiversity hotspots, erosion zones, different fishing grounds, and newly rehabilitated areas. The maps reveal that integrating PRM and indigenous geo-referenced information can elicit past and contemporary information on (changes in) ecosystem service availability and use. The results show that by involving local communities from the beginning, the participatory ES mapping can facilitate social learning, provide the foundation for the creation of social capital, and equip the community with sufficient spatial information to improve local mangrove management. The participatory ES mapping approach presented in this paper can be used as a model to support local and regional decision-making processes and to enhance community-based mangrove management in other coastal regions in Indonesia and beyond.

Community Perceptions of Mangrove Ecosystem Services and Their Determinants in the Rufiji Delta, Tanzania

“…This experience had contributed to increased insights of the value of mangroves in protecting their villages and lives from flooding. A similar result was reported by Damastuti and de Groot [49], who showed that the incidence of coastal hazards, such as storms and tsunamis, make coastal communities value mangrove ecosystem services, such as coastal protection. Furthermore, during the FGDs, all local communities perceived that mangrove forests contributed to the formation of rainfall and thus provided suitable climatic conditions for agricultural activities.…”

Transparency for Whom? Grounding Land Investment Transparency in the Needs of Local Actors

“…202 Crucial to the co-production of data is what happens to it afterwards: communities must have equal access to the data they help produce, rather than enabling the "extraction" of such data from communities. 203…”

Non-Timber Forest Product Livelihood-Focused Interventions in Support of Mangrove Restoration: A Call to Action

“…NTFPs from mangroves include many animal products, but animal products are generally fisheries-related (mangrove finfish, shrimp, crabs, bivalves and gastropods) and their economic significance is much better documented than plant-related NTFPs. Often, there are production data particularly for the most important finfish, shrimp, crabs and mollusks [36,[84][85][86], even if they generally still tend to be poorly documented. In this paper, we focus on non-destructive plant-related products and uses.…”

“…Such lack of alignment or "scale mismatch" between ecologically-connected systems and management boundaries creates major social and ecological complexities for management [31,32]. This challenge of proper distribution of accrued benefits resulting from nature-based mangrove management has spurned various community-based and benefit-sharing approaches (e.g., community-based forest management, bio-rights) as means to ensure that mangrove management benefits and costs are more equitably spread amongst all stakeholders [13,[33][34][35][36]. Likewise, the Forest Department of Bangladesh (FD) [37] highlighted the need to share the benefits of forest wild harvest among the communities living around the Sundarbans mangrove forest.…”