Socio-ecological assessment frameworks like ecosystem services and nature's contributions to people help understanding complex human-nature couplings, but each with their own caveats. There has been little work done on understanding how human-nature couplings evolve through multiple generations, and how that impacts socio-ecological resilience. Mangroves, coupling high biological conservation values and various benefits provided to coastal communities, are ideal social-ecological systems to explore generational human-nature couplings. This study uses the Western Indian Ocean island of Mauritius to highlight the socio-political and cultural values attributed to local practices in mangroves. Through a socio-anthropological approach, information was collected on human practices in mangroves, their social, ontological and political relevance for mangroves-users, their local ecological knowledge (LEK), as well as the perceived changes in mangroves-human couplings. Two free listing methods on mangroves perception and linguistic diversity associated to fished species were also implemented in four coastal villages. The results show that mangroves are associated to multiple social, political and ontological values in Mauritius, notably cultural heritage values, LEK maintenance, matrilineal knowledge transmission systems, linguistic diversity and coastal socio-cultural activities. The presence of mangroves in small-scale seafood production systems also highlights their role in maintaining traditional coastal livelihoods. The narratives of changes within mangroves socio-ecosystems are either maintained or evolving through generations, as are the places of defined actors in coastal communities. Our findings suggest that without formal integration of relational values of mangrove at policy and governance levels, their decline will further produce economic and social insecurity for stewards and users of the coast.
Merven et al. (2025) studied this question.