ANNOUNCEMENTS
The wetland is one of the most important natural resources which acts as a kidney of the earth. Among other wetlands, the coastal wetlands are under tremendous pressure comparing with other ecosystems in the recent context. The thesis carried out research in the Kazhuveli wetlands located in Villupuram district of Tamil Nadu, India. The Kazhuveli wetland is the second-largest backwater wetland in southern India. It supports a wide and diverse range of flora and fauna and provides multiple benefits, directly as well as indirectly valuable to communities. The thesis attempted to answer the four major objectives which includes.
1. Landuse change of the Kazhuveli wetland for last 33 years using supervised classification
2. Understanding the stakeholder’s perceptions of stakeholder on the conservation of wetlands.
3. Assessing the community dependence on wetland using livelihood framework.
4. Estimating the economic value of the wetland ecosystem services using stated preference method.
To address these objectives, the uses mixed method approach (qualitative and quantitative methodologies) was used in the thesis, to lay out three important objectives and made use of remote sensing for the decadal analysis to address the fourth objective.
Land use changes of the wetland landscape have been mapped using supervised classification of Landsat 5 and 8 images. Stakeholder surveys were conducted among 162 stakeholders directly involved in different levels of conservation and dependency. The livelihood assessment was carried out using a primary household survey from 394 sampled households across 22 villages around the Kazhuveli wetland. Choice experiment survey was conducted among the 264 sampled households from the 22 villages. In addition, more than 40 KII’s, and 12 FGD’s were conducted in the respondent villages.
The research finds that the conversion from agroforestry to agriculture and settlements was significant from 1991 to 2023. The settlement area showed an increasing trend from 1991 to 2011 and was decreased the rate it was before. Water stagnation in the Kazhuveli floodplain did not exist earlier, during the summers, but in the 2023 imagery, it was evident that the water in the floodplain area was significant. Water bodies and sand dunes were highly affected due to settlement and other land conversions from 2011-2023, and the rate was faster during 2001 to 2023.
Stakeholder analysis showed that the stakeholders preferred a conservation strategy along with the community and forest department rather than be managed only by the forest department. It was also evident that the coordination between stakeholders to manage the larger wetland was not significant at the district level. The forest department allowed the community to catch the fish in the Yedayanthittu estuary and Uppukali Creek. It was evident from the results that livelihood strategies that were significant were farming, shrimp farming, salt pan farming, and fishing. The communities engaged in agriculture were significantly high comparing with other livelihoods opportunities. It was evident that shrimp farming threatens other livelihood strategies because water release into wetlands from it adversely affects the quality of products of other livelihoods. It was clear that the communities engaged in the livelihoods were interlinked in nature but did not interact with each other. The economic value of the Kazhuveli wetland was estimated using the Conditional Logit and Random Parameter models. The respondents preferred to choose four scenarios in which the aggregated economic value (conservation fee) was calculated: scenario A was 11.96 crores/ year, scenario B was 12.05 crores/ year, scenario C was 11.09 crores/ year and Scenario D 14.48 crores/ year. Nearly 80% of the communities were willing to pay to conserve the Kazhuveli wetlands. The research further concludes with the other aspects, such as the development of an integrated management plan for Kazhuveli wetland, the development of eco-tourism facilities and the restoration of system channels to the wetland were critical for maintaining the inflow of water to the wetland to sustain the natural flow of the wetland.
Keywords: Coastal Wetlands, Livelihood, LULC and Ecosystem Valuation, Kazhuveli wetland, DFID Livelihood Framework.
