Some remarks on Mangroves in the Lesser Antilles

During the past thirty years the surface of mangrove swamps in the Lesser Antilles has globally decreased over twenty percent. The phenomenon is worldwide spread but the Lesser Antilles’ issues remain noteworthy because, due to the small size of these islands, prejudices on the mangrove swamps may have significant impacts. This paper starts to address some methodological remarks about statistics concerning mangroves (before the nineties, long-term data are incomplete and they impede a good estimate of the evolution of this ecosystem) and is mainly divided in two parts. In the first part, we briefly recall the importance of mangrove swamps in the Lesser Antilles. Despite the different physical characteristics of these islands, mangroves appear from several points of view as one of the common feature in these islands. Quantitatively, from 1980 to 2010, the area occupied by mangroves has regressed in the Lesser Antilles and in the world in general. Mangroves were soon disqualified owing to their inaccessibility and unhealthiness. Furthermore, deprived of their traditional functions, they have been progressively marginalized with economic development and rising living standards in small islands economies notwithstanding their positive role as an ecosystem. Highlighted since the 1980s, this role appears particularly evident in the field of marine resources and protection against hurricanes and tsunamis, but also to help restore the quality of coastal waters and biodiversity. In the second part of this paper, we wonder about the paradox faced by the inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles. On the one hand they really cannot prevent major natural threats on their wetlands like global climate change, hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanoes or tsunamis. And on the other hand, due to their territorial and political scale, these small islands should be able to act against local anthropogenic threats i.e. deforestation, household effluents, agriculture, urbanization, tourism, etc. Indeed, the Lesser Antilles islands have adopted the principles of ecosystem protection and integrated development of coastal areas (including various international conventions in this area). The land use policy, the urban planning, the building on the coastline or next to the mangroves are theoretically under public control. But the paradox is that effective provisions and outcomes are often weak against direct anthropogenic threats even if local solutions do not seem to be out of reach. We give a few typical examples illustrating the damage to mangroves in these islands today whatever the political status or the administrative organization. We conclude by considering that the case of mangroves in the Lesser Antilles may be a good illustration of the economic problem posed by the management of the commons. Shortly, the protection granted to goods depends on the value of goods. As for us the continuous decrease of mangrove surfaces reflects the lack of recognition of their value at every sense of the word. Even outside the market system, the recovery and the protection of mangrove swamps should first involve the determination of their explicit economic value.