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Shoreline protection
Data was non-existent in the sites on records
of incidence and expenditure on disasters.
Consequently, a damage cost avoided
method was used to calculate the costs of all
infrastructure and amenities including houses,
roads, buildings, telecommunications, water
and electricity within a 500m band in the
mangrove sites as areas likely to be affected
by any impact due to mangrove destruction.
Infrastructure was classified into permanent and
semi-permanent housing, roads, institutional
(all equipment, assets materials belonging to
a given institution), electricity (transmission
poles, equipment, etc.), water (portable), tele-
communication (transmission poles, station and
equipment). A replacement method was also
employed to calculate the cost per unit area of
replacing mangroves with seawalls, and this was
compared to the damage cost avoided method.
Mangrove wood products (e.g. firewood and
building)
Acontingentmethod, combinedwith structured
questionnaire and observation techniques
was used to value mangrove wood products.
The amount of wood used by a household
1
in
the area was estimated as well as estimates of
turnover rates by members of the household
for cooking and fish smoking activities. The data
was then used to estimate annual mangrove
wood requirements per household.
1
A household was defined in this case as people irrespec-
tive of families, sleeping under one roof or living in same house.
Plate 2: Fish smoking in Cameroon
Tourism
The touristic value of mangrove sites was
evaluated wherever visitor data were available
from local governments and businesses. Data
were collected from official records kept by
national park authorities.