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Blue Economy, an alternative for the conservation of coastal-marine resources in the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion

GEF/WWF Mesoamerican Reef project

By IW:LEARN

June 1^st, 2022

The blue economy emerges as an international response to the ocean ecosystem’s management, making them more sustainable. All concepts and definitions coincide in recognizing the potential of the marine environment as a source of wealth and prosperity for coastal regions, including indigenous peoples and local communities dependent on these resources.

This approach is promoted in the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion (MAR) (Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and Honduras), spanning more than 1,000 km of coastline and covering an area of 464,263 km2 of ocean, coasts and watersheds draining into the Caribbean.

The MAR ecoregion has a unique biodiversity that allows the development of multiple economic activities and the location of coastal communities. Therefore, its conservation is a shared responsibility that requires the development and application of legal frameworks, policies and coordinated actions that ensure its socio-environmental sustainability, which will have a positive impact on the economy and on the people in its area of influence.

Consequently, the sustainable use of ocean resources will trade off between the environment, the population and economic activities, as stated in the Regional Environmental Framework Strategy (ERAM), promoted by the ministers of environment and natural resources within the Central American Commission on Environment and Development (CCAD) from the Central American Integration System (SICA).

The benefit in the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion comes from the livelihoods and economic wealth, among others, through the tourism services, improvements in health for people in a natural habitat, and in an environment rich in biodiversity; with a wide variety of wildlife and flora. In this framework, the application of a blue economy vision will contribute to the development of positive policies and actions in pro of sustainability, addressing the ridge-to-reef approach, which enables the political, strategic, technical and operational conditions to attract investments, to address threats for integrity of ecosystems and the livelihoods associated with them.

The SICA region recognizes its commitment to be a Blue Region, based in the Roatan Agreements, through the Regional Strategy for the Blue Economy (ERCA). This results as a region committed applying the blue economy as a sustainable development strategy for coastal communities.

In this context, the CCAD with MAR2R[1] project supported by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), advances in MAR Ecoregion in the application of this commitment, building the Regional Protocol of Blue Economy with Ridge to Reef approach (PREA-R2R). This regional instrument will provide guidelines for the countries to design blue economy strategies based on national circumstances. Likewise, it may be a reference for other SICA countries, providing experiences and lessons learned.

The vision that "the Mesoamerican Reef Ecoregion develops sustainably based on the balance of ecosystems conservation and local socioeconomic development, generating a sense of shared responsibility between public-private stakeholders" requires a coordinated effort between all of them.

From this perspective, the application of a blue economy approach requires a holistic vision of the territory based on knowledge and analysis of interrelations between economic and social activities that take place in the MAR Ecoregion, including impacts of these on the region. . In addition, includes analysis of intersectoral contributions and the multistakeholder participation in a collaborative way for the knowledge management of the state of conservation and the management of the ecosystem services produced, to promote processes of decision-making, looking the optimum benefits for ecosystems and peoples.

This vision of the ecoregion as a "whole" directly benefits its conservation and restoration, the promotion of economic activities and the sustainability of coastal communities.

The conservation of our environment is unquestionably the responsibility of all the people who inhabit the planet, regardless of the group to which we belong. Only if we recognize our role in the ecosystem in terms of the impact that we are generating in preservation, will we be aware to act coherently in favor of the sustainable development. This will only be achieved being collaborative, integral, responsible and committed.