The tropical wetland ecosystems including mangroves are known to provide a number of ecological services and economic benefits. Though there were attempts to carry out economic analysis of the contributions of coastal wetlands located in the developing countries such as Thailand (Sathirathai, 1997), Indonesia (Ruitenbeek, 1994), and Mexico (Barbier and Strand, 1998) 4, we have not come across any such study in South Asia 5. An important reason for this lacuna is the absence of adequate information and data linking physical features or ecological characteristics (for example, the area under mangroves) and economic activities (such as fishing) for a sufficiently long period of time. Thus there is a crucial need for applied economic research on the ecology-economic linkages of ecosystems such as mangroves in different contexts having varying physical, economic, and institutional characteristics in South Asia. It is with this motivation that this research project was formulated and implemented in India and Bangladesh. It aimed at identifying and/or valuing some of the important economic contributions of mangroves. The other objective was to see the influence of institutional structures or property rights on the economic use of these mangroves. The study was carried out in three locations–Cochin (in Kerala) and the West Bengal and Bangladesh part of Sundarbans, which is the biggest single stretch of mangroves in the world.

Thus the central issue that was analysed in the project was the following: how do mangroves, located in different biophysical, economic, and institutional environments affect the production of certain goods and services? Broadly, the methodology employed was to identify this influence from the cross-sectional secondary data or primary data collected from different stakeholders. Nevertheless, the actual conduct of the study in each of the three locations mentioned above was tuned to local conditions and the availability of (or possibility of collecting) primary data.