Study title

Mangroves provide important socio-ecological services to coastal communities, such as coastal line protection, fish, shrimp and crab fishery, provide domestic fuel and building material. If excessive, the extractive exploitation of mangrove resources can lead to substantial changes in the forest structure of mangrove forests, and can also impair the provision of ecological services. The mangrove data collected throughout the SPACES project (Forest structure and condition; Soil carbon) has been used to quantify the transformations that occurred on mangroves in peri-urban and rural sites and used to compare the sites.This project aims to better understand the links between ecosystem services (ES) and wellbeing in order to design and implement more effective interventions for poverty alleviation. We do this in the context of coastal, social-ecological systems in two poor African countries; Kenya and Mozambique. Despite recent policy and scientific interest in ES, there remain important knowledge gaps regarding how ecosystems actually contribute to wellbeing, and thus poverty alleviation. Following the ESPA framework, distinguishing ecological processes, 'final ES', 'capital inputs', 'goods' and 'values', this project is concerned with how these elements are interrelated to produce ES benefits, and focuses specifically on how these benefits are distributed to (potentially) benefit the poor, enhancing their wellbeing. We thus address the ESPA goal of understanding and promoting ways in which benefits to the poorest can be increased and more people can meet their basic needs, but we also identify conflicted tradeoffs, i.e. those which result in serious harm to either the ecosystem or poor people and which need urgent attention. Several fundamental questions are currently debated in international scientific and policy fora, relating to four major global trends which are likely to affect abilities of poor people to access ES benefits: (1) devolution of governance power...