Abstract

Conservation practice has shown that socioeconomic issues need to be taken into account in order to achieve long-lasting conservation results. Marine protected areas (MPA) are often designed as an instrument for improving both fishery management and marine environmental protection. However, fisheries in marine protected areas have been traditionally approached only within a threats context. This has often resulted in having a perception of fishermen as the “bad guys”, which at the same time discourages their participation in planning and decision making processes. Through the Conservation Action Planning (CAP) methodology, TNC has begun to include socioeconomic activities as part of the targets in the MPA planning process in the Mesoamerican Reef. Among these activities, sustainable fisheries are a highlighted issue. This new emphasis implies considering fisheries as socioeconomic targets linked to social and economical values generated in the protected area, and not only considering them from the perspective of the threats that they might cause to biodiversity. This analysis includes the identification of key attributes of fisheries with the purpose of analyzing its viability, threats to the development of the activity itself and ultimately to generate strategies focused on improving its profitability and sustainability. This approach has been applied in 2007 and 2008 in two protected areas in the Mesoamerican Reef. In the three cases, the planning process counted with a wide participation of the fisheries sector. Early evidence shows improvements on conflict resolution and strategies implementation.

PDF Preview