Capturing the value of coastal ecosystem services for poverty alleviation in East and Southern Africa

Commitment to the management of coastal ecosystems through addressing both ecological and social objectives already exists in East and Southern Africa (Glavovic 2006; Gustavson et al. 2009). More understanding, however, of the ecosystem services of priority to the poor and to poverty alleviation would strengthen the capacity of these initiatives to deliver on poverty alleviation and resource sustainability. The coastal regions of Tanzania, Mozambique and South Africa provide substantial services to the local and national populations, with artisanal fisheries being of particular importance to coastal communities. Due to the fact that this is the place where land meets water, the coast is a special and distinctive system where a range of considerations - biophysical, economic, social, cultural and institutional - interconnect in a manner that calls for a dedicated and integrated management approach (DEAT, 2000; Glavovic, 2000). In Africa, coastal systems are estimated to provide goods and services in excess of US$500 billion annually (Glavovic, 2000). Coastal ecosystem services have therefore great potential for poverty alleviation for coastal communities and for contributing to national economic growth. This project will support the development of a new consortium and a strong research proposal that builds on the experience of coastal zone management programmes. In particular, the focus on how to capture the value of coastal ecosystem services for poverty alleviation in East and Southern Africa will bring new ideas and perspectives to management, governance and poverty alleviation programmes. The Partnership and Project Development phase will focus on reviewing existing methodologies for identifying key drivers of degradation of coastal ecosystems and for estimating the economic value of key coastal ecosystem services in collaboration with poor coastal communities. The potential for the development of bioeconomic models will be explored that can analyze (1) tradeoffs between different functions; (2) optimal strategies to deal with risk and uncertainty; and (3) the role of coastal ecosystems as sources of livelihoods for the local population. Methods to enable the identification of key ecosystem services for the poor and for poverty alleviation to be considered include poverty profiling of selected case study communities (informed by livelihoods analysis), participatory research methods through which services will be identified and ranked, and changes over time discussed, and key informant interviews. Potential use of participatory methods in both ecological research and economic valuation will also be explored through the project development to contribute to new methodological approaches. Institutional analyses will enable identification of key institutions through which access is mediated to coastal resources and which constrain or enable access by the poor. Such analyses will be informed by environmental entitlements framework (Leach, Mearns and Scoones 1999; Nunan 2006) and interactive governance (Kooiman 2005). The team will communicate via a web-based platform, such as Ning, to enable the efficient sharing of documents, draft text and ideas, and team members will be encouraged to enable inter-disciplinary sharing so that the research project is fully integrated rather than a set of individual, disciplinary projects. The team will meet for one week in Maputo and Dar es Salaam to bring the draft documents together into a clear research proposal, meet with potential research users to incorporate their views into the research design and identify clear capacity building needs and strategies of Southern partners.