Abstract

The Caribbean and the North Brazil Shelf Large Marine Ecosystems (jointly referred to as CLME+), are home to the largest concentration of Small Island Developing States (SIDS) within any set of adjacent Large Marine Ecosystems (LMEs). These SIDS are very dependent on marine resources for their livelihoods and overall well-being. The ten-year Strategic Action Programme (SAP) for the CLME+ region is an output of the UNDP/GEF CLME Project (2009-2014) and was politically endorsed in 2013 by twenty-two countries, many of them designated as SIDS. The CLME+ SAP provides a road-map towards sustainable shared living marine resources management through the promotion of enhanced regional cooperation. It combines actions for structural change with capacity building at the regional, national and local levels, high priority management interventions and on-the-ground investments. The SAP consists of six strategies and four-sub strategies and seventy-seven short and medium-term priority actions. The first three strategies have a region-wide focus and seek to strengthen the existing governance arrangements for the protection of the marine environmental and for securing sustainable fisheries whilst also increasing coordination and cooperation between these two sectors. The remaining three strategies promote and support the implementation of the EBM/EAF approach to the three ecosystem sub-types known to support the most important fisheries and biodiversity in the region. The SAP´s four sub-strategies specifically focus on addressing economically important fisheries within the CLME+. Support from science to each strategy will be critical to optimize the contributions from the SAP to sustained socio-economic development in the CLME+ SIDS.

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