Mangrove livelihoods in Palawan, Philippines: individual and joint household preferences for mangrove resources and exemption interviews

The rapid loss of mangroves in Southeast Asia poses a growing threat to livelihoods in coastal communities across the region.

This study explores public attitudes towards mangroves in the Philippine province of Palawan and the extent to which coastal residents value the various benefits mangroves provide. The authors find that women’s and men’s individual responses differ when they complete the survey separately. When they reply together, their joint preferences are found to align more with the men’s preferences. This has important implications for effective and equitable policymaking. Yet environmental protection planning, climate adaptation, and policy development do not always account for residents’ interests and concerns, nor gender differences.

Past research has shown that support for environmental policies increases when fairness is considered, for instance where low-income households are exempted from payments for environmental goods and services. Because the attitudes and opinions of such households are likely to be useful to decision-makers and policy development, the authors conducted interviews with individuals from low-income households, terming them ‘exemption interviews.’ They found that, for example, villagers living below the poverty line and who have pre-existing health conditions are strongly supportive of establishing new mangrove Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), but only if the government can provide alternative income-generating opportunities with improved social protection.

Overall, the authors find that residents of Palawan value mangroves for the income-generating services they provide, such as improved fish catch, greater opportunities to harvest honey, and eco-tourism jobs. Residents are more likely to support community co-management of mangrove MPAs if they are provided with increased prospects for eco-tourism jobs and other livelihood opportunities.

Key points for decision-makers

• Mangroves are tropical and sub-tropical intertidal trees and shrubs that provide a broad range of benefits to people living near them. Mangrove ecosystems have long been under pressure from human-induced activities such as deforestation, aquaculture, agriculture and tourism, and they are increasingly vulnerable to weather and climate impacts made worse by climate change.
• Policies that affect MPAs, including those dictating how mangrove resources on Palawan are used, are more likely to be effective if they account for residents’ preferences over the use of those resources. This is because the policy impacts are usually felt by local communities first.
• Because preferences vary among women and men within households, and joint preferences are more aligned with men’s preferences, women’s priorities in environmental decision-making may be diminished if environmental policies are based on joint or household-level responses. For example, women prefer more revenue for livelihood projects over increased fish catch, whereas men prefer increased fish catch over revenue for livelihood projects. Policy measures that take explicit account of women’s preferences where they differ from men’s may increase overall community wellbeing and social inclusion.
• Identifying alternative livelihood opportunities, including ecotourism and mangrove honey harvesting, can help policymakers prepare a project pipeline for attracting investments in mangrove protection and restoration.
• Improving populations’ access to social safety nets, including health and education allowances, and provision of food with greater nutritional value, can strengthen public acceptance of protection interventions in nearby mangrove MPAs that reduce vulnerability to severe climate events such as typhoons.