This guidance note provides review and recommendations for how the protective services of mangroves and coral reefs can be measured and valued in a manner consistent with national economic accounts and included in other decision-making processes to support planning for development, disaster risk, and coastal zone management. It synthesizes evidence of the role mangroves and coral reefs play in coastal protection and risk reduction. It also reviews the tools and approaches commonly used by ecologists, economists and engineers for estimating the coastal protection services of coastal habitats.
In brief, this guidance note finds the following:
- Mangroves and coral reefs provide significant coastal protection benefits.
- For both habitats, the key biophysical characteristics that provide coastal protection benefits can be clearly identified.
- These coastal protection benefits have already been influential in informing conservation, restoration, and management decisions.
- The key coastal protection characteristics of mangroves and reefs can be readily incorporated in to process-based tools used commonly in engineering and insurance sectors.
- In terms of ecosystem service valuation, replacement cost methods are the most widely used for estimating coastal protection services, although production function methods should provide better values for ecosystem accounting.
- This note recommends and details the use of the Expected Damage Function (EDF) approach for estimating and accounting for the coastal protection benefits of mangroves and reefs, with such other approaches as replacement cost to be used when certain conditions are met.