I hope my fellow bloggers will forgive Gertz's somewhat gratuitous slam of the World Bank, because she's right about the overall point: mangroves are not only a great place to find tarpon and bonefish, but they're also a key line of defense against natural disasters. But she's right to complain about the problem of shrimp farming, which has devastated mangrove swamps in the developing world (and that's one of the reasons that I, as a relatively ardent "free trader," am not altogether apposed to the shrimp tariffs the Bush administration recently slapped on Vietnam). Something nadezhda and I have discussed in the past (I'm not sure if it was here or on tacitus) is the weakness of current economic valuation methods, especially with regard to ecological services. That weakness makes it hard to compare mangroves vs. shrimp farming via cost/benefit analysis, although that hasn't stopped people from trying. It's not impossible to assign dollar figures to, say, the boon that mangroves naturally provide to fish stocks or the value of firewood to nearby villagers (relevant only for some kinds of mangroves), but it's definitely shaky. But how on earth do you put a value on "tsunami protection?" The inherent actuarial difficulty gives the shrimp farmers an unfair advantage.
CHENNAI, DEC. 27. "Tsunami is a rare phenomenon. Though we cannot prevent the occurrence of such natural calamities, we should certainly prepare ourselves to mitigate the impact of the natural fury on the population inhabiting the coastal ecosystems. Our anticipatory research work to preserve mangrove ecosystems as the first line of defence against devastating tidal waves on the eastern coastline has proved very relevant today.
The dense mangrove forests stood like a wall to save coastal communities living behind them," said M.S. Swaminathan, Chairman, M.S. Swaminathan Research Foundation (MSSRF), Chennai.
The mangroves in Pitchavaram and Muthupet region acted like a shield and bore the brunt of the tsunami.
The impact was mitigated and lives and property of the communities inhabiting the region were saved.
"When we started the foundation 14 years ago, we initiated the anticipatory research programme — a two-pronged strategy — to meet the eventualities of sea level rise due to global warming. One is to conserve and regenerate coastal mangroves along the eastern coast of the country, and the second is transfer of salt-tolerant genes from the mangroves to selected crops grown in the coastal regions.
It is now found that wherever the mangroves have been regenerated, especially in the Orissa coast, the damage due to tsunami is minimal," he said.
Learn more about mangroves here.
UPDATE: If you don't want to save your mangroves or get frustrated with the difficulty of proper economic valuation, you could just build a giant wall.