Fishery resources and sustainability in the Nicaraguan Caribbean
Keywords:
Environmental management, Effects of human activities, Fishing, Natural resources, Sustainable developmentAbstract
This article shows that even though Nicaragua's Caribbean fishery is one of the sectors with the greatest growth potential, mismanagement could make this valuable resource collapse, as it has repeatedly occurred in other developing countries, which have exploited the resource without a strategy for sustainability. Nicaragua has the largest continental shelf in the Caribbean, and besides having one of the highest fishery biomasses in Central America, it has one of the most under-harvested marine fisheries in the region. Hence, the rational harvests of these resources could solve many of the country's socio-economic problems. However, many competing human activities in the coastal zone have led to overfishing, as well as a widespread destruction of ecologically important habitats. All of these activities have exacerbated existing problems of poverty and unemployment. The Caribbean coastal zone, by virtue of its isolation from the rest of the country and with one of the lowest population densities in Latin America, offers an excellent pilot area for developing a sustainable fishery management strategy. For such a strategy to be successful, it must close a large interdisciplinary gap that currently exists in all resource management strategies developed to date in Nicaragua, including the participation of the resource users as the center of the strategy and involving them as comanagers in order to help ensure sustainability.
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