**1. Introduction**

Globally, mangroves occupy the upper tidal zones in the tropical and subtropical regions of Africa, Asia, Oceania, the Americas, and the Caribbean. Altogether, they account for about 15,642,673 hectares to 17,075,600 hectares of the earth's land [1]. The greatest diversity of species is found in South-east Asia where mangroves envelop more than one million hectares of land, representing about 7% of the global total land area coverage [2–4]. Mangrove forests perform a variety of functions and provide a wide array of services, ranging from ecological and protective to social and economic. They provide nursery ground for various marine species; create habitats for bees and other animals; [4] absorb pollutants;

stabilize sediments originating from sea-land interactions; and protect coastal communities from strong winds and waves [4, 5]. Their usefulness also includes the provision of food, medicine, fuels, and construction materials, as well as increasing biodiversity values for local communities [5].

However, while available data point to a variety uses of mangrove ecosystems, analysis of remotely sensed images shows that mangroves are recognized as the most important soft-engineering sea defense structure against erosion in lowlying coastal areas in Guyana [6, 7]. By virtue of more than 75% of the country's population residing along the coastal belt and within proximity of mangrove habitats, uncontrolled developments, economic activities [7–9], and erosion episodes [7, 9] have severely impacted the sustainability of mangrove ecosystems in some locations over the years. These trends, along with the prospect of sea-level rise [10–13], necessitate investigation of how changes in land use, land cover, and land tenure arrangements affect mangrove colony and distribution [6, 9, 12]. For close to a decade, there has been renewed interest in the protection and management of mangroves along Guyana's sea coast [12]. The establishment of the Guyana Mangrove Restoration Project (GRMP) in 2010 is one of the main responses initiated by the government to address these issues [14]. Also, at the policy level, mangrove restoration and management have been identified as two of Guyana's primary responses to the prospect of climate change and sea-level rise, and honoring of obligations to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The primary objective—founded on three key principles adumbrated by the project document—of the GMRP is to promote the sustainable management of mangroves. These principles are ecological sustainability, economic sustainability, and social system sustainability. According to the GMRP, ecological sustainability suggests maintaining the ecological balance of mangrove ecosystems at its restoration sites while utilizing some resources. Economic sustainability identifies opportunities for satisfying some basic needs of the local communities by establishing mangrove reserves and producers cooperatives, for example; and sustainability of the social systems is directed to developing infrastructure, such as building common facilities for community activities, ensuring social justice, and sustaining local and national traditions that are enshrined in the national policy documents [6, 8, 15]. The different types of land tenure systems invariably have an influence on land use and mangrove management. The objectives of this study, therefore, were to determine the relationship between the dominant land uses and the extent of mangrove coverage in the study area, and to examine land tenure issues that impacted the conservation and sustainable management of mangroves using a case-study approach.
