Community Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Towards Importance and Sustainability of Mangrove Forests: A Case Study of Kuala Langat, Malaysia.

International Journal of Research and Innovation in Social Science (IJRISS) | Volume V, Issue V, May 2021 | ISSN 2454–6186

Community Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice Towards Importance and Sustainability of Mangrove Forests: A Case Study of Kuala Langat, Malaysia.

Rosazlin Abdullah¹*, Anis Farhana Hanif², Sahrianisa Toufik.³, Rozainah Mohd. Zakaria⁴, Wan Rasidah Kadir. ⁵, Tariq Mubarak Husin⁶, Nur Sa’adah Halim⁷ and Aaronn Avit Ajeng^8
1,²,³,⁴,⁷,⁸Institute of Biological Science, Faculty of Science, University of Malaya,
50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
⁵,⁶Forest Research Institute Malaysia, 52109 Kepong, Selangor, Malaysia.
*Corresponding author

Abstract – Mangrove forests degradation is happening globally at an alarming rate since the 80’s. Land conversion for human activities is one of many reasons contributing to the issue. The access the Knowledge, Attitude and Practice (KAP) on the function and conservation of mangrove, data was collected in Kuala Langat, Selangor within the vicinity of Sijangkang Mangrove Recreational Park using in-depth interviews (N = 100) and analysed using using ANOVA and linear regression. Results revealed that the respondents understand the importance of mangrove forests with high total mean knowledge score (80.93±7.77), attitude (75.83±8.51), and average on practice (55.95±11.44). Education is an important indication; resident status will determine the attitude towards the knowledge on the mangrove conservation. The linear regression depicts positive correlation between KAP variables where any changes will affect other variables.

Keywords: Mangrove forest, Knowledge, Attitude, Practice, KAP, Sustainability.

I.INTRODUCTION
Mangrove forests inhabit the highly productive inter-tidal ecosystems in over 120 countries in both tropics and subtropics, providing multiple importance to the coastal communities [1]. The forests protect the coastline from natural disasters [2] and mitigate global climate change attributable to the atmospheric carbon sequestration [3] which stockpiles the carbon within the ecosystem [1]. A large number of marine lives such as fishes and crabs reside in the ecosystem [4] where 23% of India’s marine fish output in 2011 was contributed by the mangroves alone [5]. Construction materials (pile wood), charcoal, firewood, pulps, tannin, and traditional medicine products used by villagers are also sourced from the mangrove forests [6]. In Asia, the mangroves are crucial to the livelihood of more than

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