Efectiveness of community participation in Mangrove restoration: the evidence from northern Sri Lanka

Abstract

As a result of the past failures in centralized management, community-based man- agement approach was evolved as a better alternative in Mangrove management.

However, efectiveness of community-based Mangrove management is remained as an important policy question with limited empirical evidence. This study aims to empirically investigate the efectiveness of community participation on Mangrove restoration using the village-level data collected from lagoon-based fshing villages in northern Sri Lanka during 2009–2020. In addition to the feld data, this study adopts satellite imagery data of Landsat-7 and Landsat-8 to estimate the extent of Mangrove cover as an indicator of Mangrove restoration performance. The results

show that community participation has a signifcant and positive impact on Man- grove restoration, suggesting the importance of strengthening community manage- ment practices for future Mangrove management.