Mangrove restoration, changing fish markets and food security | Jeff Pagel

Jeffrey Pagel is a Research Officer at the Department of Geography at LSE. Jeff will present the paper Mangrove Restoration, Changing Fish Markets and Food Security by Jeff Pagel, Charles Palmer and Lorenzo Sileci.

Abstract

In recent decades, mangrove restoration efforts have expanded significantly in scale and scope across the globe. This paper examines how local fisheries respond to man- grove restoration and how this response affects the wellbeing of fishing and non-fishing households in the Philippines. We begin with a bioeconomic fisheries model, which suggests that restoration could increase fishing effort, catch, and income. A difference- in-differences strategy is applied to village- and household-level data, exploiting variation from a nationwide tree-planting initiative implemented between 2011 and 2018, restoring mangroves in a staggered manner across villages. Mangrove restoration is found to increase fishing activity, reflected in more vessels, greater capital investment, and expanded fishing effort, but had no impact on catch or catch per unit effort. Furthermore, poorer households are more likely to enter the fishing sector, while wealthier households are more likely to increase their capital investment and fishing incomes. Next, we show that mangrove restoration drives a substitution away from the consumption of fish toward meat and eggs, particularly among poor households. This pattern extends to non-fishing households, indicating spillover effects within treated villages. These shifts in consumption correspond to greater protein diversity, most notably among poorer households, regardless of whether they participate in fishing. Together, these findings highlight the potential for ecological restoration to stimulate economic activity and improve dietary quality in resource-dependent communities.

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