| Due to its low level of economic development and heavy reliance on terrestrial and aquatic cultivation for livelihood generation, the coastal zone in Bangladesh is uniquely vulnerable to the potential impacts of climate change. These include not only changes in temperature and precipitation regimes, but also greater flooding, sea level rise, salinity intrusion, and increased severity of tropical cyclonic storms and their associated tidal surges. Between 1960 and 2001, the Government of Bangladesh established approximately 148,000ha of mangrove plantations in the coastal districts within Barisal and Chittagong Divisions for the purposes of shoreline stabilization, land accretion, and storm surge protection. Mangroves worldwide provide a wide range of goods and services utilized directly and indirectly by local peoples. Concern over the welfare of the rural poor brings to question how local communities benefit from these plantations.;Chapter 1 investigates how and to what degree people directly utilize these mangroves. I conducted 340 household surveys across eight coastal villages within Barisal and Chittagong Divisions located in close proximity to established, healthy plantations. The predominant direct use of the mangrove plantations by local rural communities is the extraction of detritus and non-main stem material (e.g., limbs, leaves) for combustible fuel. This study used household foraging distances to estimate and map net value densities based on reported market prices of extracted goods. The average extractive value of mangrove plantations is 2300 Tk/ha-yr, ranging among the villages from 300 to 27,400 Tic/ha-yr. Cost-benefit analyses suggest that direct use values alone have justified the establishment and management of previously planted stands. However, other indirect values must be taken into account if these areas are to merit additional plantations.;Econometric results reported in Chapter 2 suggest that determinants of the household decision to collect mangrove fuelwood include respondent occupation and village. Farmers are significantly less likely to extract mangrove fuels due to the availability of substitutes such as home tree lots and livestock dung. Residents of Mirzanagar are also less likely to collect fuelwood from mangroves and instead obtain non-mangrove fuelwood via market purchase. Collection quantities are positively correlated with degree of poverty, with poorer households significantly less likely to access non-mangrove fuelwood markets. These results are robust to selection bias, spatial lag dependence, and spatial error dependence, and have important implications for beneficiary selection for future mangrove plantations.;Chapter 3 investigates the effectiveness of mangrove plantations in mitigating tropical storm surges, by econometrically analyzing the net revenues of agriculture and aquaculture operations with varying degrees of vegetation barriers with the coastline.;This study utilized livelihood data from the Household Income Expendure Data from 2000, 2005, and 2010. The analyses controlled for climate normals, household characteristics, and soil, flood risk, and other geophysical variables. Both agriculture and aquaculture profits are sensitive to climate conditions. Both are also vulnerable to damages from excessive riverine flooding and storm surge inundation. High salinity and poor drainage are detrimental to farms, but aquaculture ponds are more resilient to salinity and benefit from poor drainage.;This study also discerns few protective benefits from coastal vegetation barriers for agriculture and aquaculture profits in the years studied. However, this study is limited by the fact that no major cyclonic storm occurred during the years examined. Also, the plantations may be insufficiently thick and contiguous to provide protection in the areas at greatest risk of storm surge inundation. |
