Abstract

Salvador is island-sized, natural-resource dependent, and highly vulnerable to climate change, making it comparable to many Caribbean Small Island Developing States (SIDS). It has a lengthy coast and many poor mangrove-dependent communities with a history of neoliberal government neglect, strengthening the comparison further. Since 2011, civil society and local agents have filled the governance void in the area around western Jiquilisco Bay with grass-roots programs for mangrove restoration, shellfish and crustacean fishery management, and efforts to eradicate a blast-fishing problem impacting an endangered marine turtle species. Through a discussion of these initiatives, this paper argues that absence of government does not mean absence of governance, although long-term prognostication for profit-based fisheries in the region cannot be optimistic. The theory and methods used for the findings described in this paper are customary in the qualitative branches of the social sciences. The approach taken is that of the discipline of human-environment geography.

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