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3.5
Biodiversity and Cultural Services fromWest and Central
African coastal Ecosystems
The GCLME and CCLME coastal ecosystems, including
mangroves, shallow lagoons and seagrass beds and
meadows, are biodiversity hotspots, hosting an array of life
forms and activity that benefit people.
183
Social interactions
and leisure activities, as well as spiritual and religious
customs, are rooted in coastal people’s connection to the
ocean.
184
Taken together, such biodiversity and cultural
services from west and central African coastal ecosystems
provide at least US$ 55 million to the GCLME and CCLME
regions.
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GCLME coastal biodiversity and cultural services
(excluding tourism) provide an estimated impact of US$
37.6 million, a fraction of the total estimated US$ 27.2
billion impact (excludes tourism)
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attributed to GCLME
coastal ecosystem services.
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For the CCLME, an estimated
US$ 17.5 million biodiversity/cultural value from mangrove
and seagrass ecosystems is an even smaller portion of the
CCLME coastal ecosystem economic impact figure of US$
1.5 billion (excludes “opportunities for tourism”).
188
Identical to the methodology used to calculate the economic
impact associated with ocean biodiversity and cultural
services, the estimated economic impacts of their GCLME
coastal counterparts is based on figures from the COPI
report (see section 2.4). Interwies (2011) equally assigns a
derived value of US$ 10.3/ha to the economic impact of both
biodiversity and cultural services from coastal ecosystems.
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The median value of US$ 23/ha from the Brander meta-analysis
(2006) used to calculate CCLME biodiversity/cultural ocean
ecosystem services is also applied to CCLME mangroves, seagrass
beds and meadows, and beaches and dunes (although the
beaches and dunes value is omitted from the total due to lack
of data on the size of these ecosystems) (see section 2.4).
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The
US$ 23/ha value is multiplied by the area of CCLME mangrove
coverage and also by the area of CCLME seagrass coverage to
obtain separate biodiversity/cultural values of US$ 15.2million for
mangroves andUS$2.3million for seagrass beds andmeadows.
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