Targets for coastal action (map)

A shellfish gatherer earns a hard living

Crabs are cleaned for market

More on the Ecuador Coastal Resources Management Program

By ROGER HAMILTON

Mora was not the kind of person who goes around looking for trouble. Peaceful and public spirited, a lawyer by profession, the negotiating table was his preferred field of action. But he was also the head of a committee charged with managing the local coastal environment. So when he received a report that a shrimp farmer had blocked access to an inlet used by local fishermen, it was his duty to investigate.

When he and several others arrived at the trouble spot, shots rang out. Fortunately, the guards were under orders to merely frighten "intruders," not kill them, so no harm was done.

The matter could have ended there, another unresolved dispute left to fester and probably to produce further conflicts. But Mora's committee was part of a much larger effort that enjoyed the support not only of the community, but also of the local authorities and the central government. He took the problem to the municipal officials, who eventually intervened and persuaded the farmer to reopen the inlet.

There had been other incidents, particularly after Mora had reported the illegal cutting of protected mangrove swamps. "When the shrimp farmers learned that I had made the reports, I received telephoned threats, against me and my family," Mora recalled. It sounded eerily reminiscent of the experiences of protectors of the environment in many other parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, some of whom have paid dearly for their efforts.

But Mora said he was not worried. "I insist that we are not enemies," he said of the shrimp farmers. "We are even starting to become friends."

Hopefully Mora is right, both for his own sake and for the future of the 43 percent of his country's people who live along this marine mosaic of beaches, salt flats and mangrove swamps. Many thousands directly depend upon the coastal bounty of shrimp, fish, shellfish and crabs, and many more on the environmental services--such as water purification and protection of the land--that mangrove swamps provide.

Although the details vary, the problems affecting coastal environments are quite similar in developing areas around the world: laws and regulations that governments cannot enforce, lack of participation by local people, serious conflicts among user groups and insufficient scientific information on which to base management decisions. Many of the countries with the most serious environmental problems are the least prepared to resolve them.

But in Ecuador, although the problems remain immense, people like Edgar Mora are beginning the slow and difficult process of bringing local communities together with governmental authorities and other groups to make sustainable development a reality.

Faustian bargain. Shrimp farming is both Ecuador's economic blessing and its environmental curse. After large-scale operations began there in the early 1980s, the value of shrimp exports exploded from $31 million to $539 million in 1994, and to a projected $950 million in 1999. Today some 260,000 Ecuadorians are employed in 1,360 square km of man-made shrimp ponds and more than 400 hatcheries, processing plants and other facilities. Shrimp production has become the country's single largest private sector activity, and foreign exchange earnings from shrimp exports rank third in value after oil and bananas.

Ecuador's booming shrimp business has counterparts in many other tropical areas around the world, where intensive cultivation has netted large returns for growers and cheaper prices for consumers. In the last decade, the price of shrimp dropped from about $l5 a pound in the United States to about $6, and worldwide shrimp consumption has doubled. Traditionally the high-priced entreé, the tasty crustacean has become an article of mass consumption, even appearing on fast-food menus.

At first, shrimp farming was welcomed as a way to reduce pressure on the harvesting of wild populations, which peaked worldwide in 1994 and have been declining ever since. Wild shrimp are caught by trawlers that also net enormous amounts of non-target fish species and turtles. This so-called "by-catch," which can equal five times the weight of the shrimp itself, is discarded by the shrimp trawlers.

But shrimp farming proved to be destructive in its own right, particularly to mangrove trees and estuarine ecosystems. Forming impenetrable thickets in tidal shallows, mangroves serve as an anchor for a large part of the coastal ecosystem. Their tangled roots, sticking into the mud like fingers on a hand, provide a safe haven for the young of many species of fish, shrimp and other marine life. Some of these species remain in the estuary throughout their life cycles, while others grow to maturity in the open ocean.

The shrimp industry depends on mangroves for shrimp larvae and clean estuarine water in which to grow the larvae to maturity. But the shrimp farmers also need land for constructing ponds. Over the past 25 years, the expansion of Ecuador's shrimp industry has reduced the country's mangrove swamps by more than 20 percent. Moreover, 85 percent of the country's salt flats have also been converted to ponds.

As on land, where clear-cutting trees destroys the habitat and eliminates most of the creatures that lived there, cutting mangroves has a disastrous effect on coastal ecosystems. In addition, the water flushed from shrimp ponds is laced with pesticides, antibiotics and large amounts of nutrient-rich feeds that contaminate estuaries and the sea life in them.

Along with their value for fisheries, mangroves provide other essential goods and services for local communities¯wood, charcoal, a buffer against hurricane waves for inland areas, and a filter for sediments. Researchers working in Campeche, Mexico, arrived at the following hypothetical annual value of one hectare of sustainably managed mangrove swamp:

Charcoal: $451
Wood: $631
Habitat and food for fisheries: $1,578
Water filtering: $1,193

These figures do not include the value of mangroves as a habitat for threatened species, a source of goods and services used for subsistence for local people, and protection of the coastline.

Given their value, why not simply have the government step in and prohibit the cutting of mangroves? This top-down approach has been tried in many places, including the Philippines, where the application of such policies was followed by the loss of half of the country's mangroves. In Ecuador, legislation that prohibits cutting mangroves and the construction or expansion of shrimp ponds has been on the books since 1978. But the cutting has not stopped.

People in partnership. Now a new approach to saving the mangroves, protecting the coastal environment and reducing conflicts among users is underway in Ecuador, and Mora's committee is a part of it. Unlike the failed efforts of the past, the Coastal Resources Management Program is founded on a broad-based cooperative effort that forms a partnership with people of the region with the Ecuadorian government, the IDB, international and national nongovernmental organizations and bilateral agencies.

The program began in 1986 when Ecuador's government, along with the United States Agency for International Development, the University of Rhode Island's Coastal Resource Center and the Guayaquil-based Pedro Vicente Maldonado Foundation, began working with coastal communities to identify needs and possible solutions. In 1989, the program was formally created and six Special Management Zones were established--five along the mainland and one for the Galápagos Islands.

Within the management zones live some 280,000 people, many of them directly dependent on coastal resources: collectors of shrimp larvae, small-scale fishermen and shrimp farmers, operators of tourism services, wood gatherers and charcoal makers.

It was a promising start that produced 40 pilot projects and clear evidence that community members themselves could help protect the environment, reduce conflicts and improve living conditions. But the program was much too small to address the problem.

Then, in 1993, the IDB approved $14.9 million to expand the program. Reflecting the principles that would underlie the Bank's Coastal and Marine Resources Management Strategy (see article "A new era for marine management" in this issue), this pioneering effort would be closely watched around the world as an example of how community participation can solve environmental problems.

Now in its sixth year, the program has funded dozens of projects to protect mangroves, reforest denuded areas and promote ecotourism in mangrove habitats. These projects have also included the construction of drinking water and solid waste disposal systems, which have provided some 100,000 coastal residents in the five management zones with basic sanitation.

At the same time, surveys of critical segments of shoreline have been carried out in each of the management zones that are developed or are pending development. Zoning measures have been put in place to protect these areas, and small structures have been built to stem shoreline erosion and pollution.

In the area of fisheries management, community members have helped to collect data on fisheries stocks and research is underway that will make it possible to draw up a comprehensive plan for managing estuaries. Groups of women who harvest mollusks and crustaceans in mangrove swamps have received help in restocking traditional harvest areas, and community members have carried out pilot mariculture projects.

Other research projects are looking at ways to reduce the wastage of wild stocks of shrimp larvae in mariculture operations and to improve hatchery and shrimp pond operation. A cooperative program of surveillance and preventive enforcement is being carried out to protect mangroves, manage water use and regulate fish and shrimp harvests. Conservation inspection units now patrol most stretches of the coast, working with communities and local governments to crack down on mangrove cutting.

Meanwhile, public agencies participating in the program are receiving training, equipment and personnel, while local community members are benefitting from education programs and leadership training.

Persistence rewarded. While "community participation" is a phrase that rolls easily off tongues at development conferences, things don't always go so smoothly in the field.

This certainly has been the case in the Ecuador program. Luis Arriaga, a consultant from the University of Rhode Island who was one of the program's founders, described some of the reasons it took eight years to create the special management zones, rather than the two years originally envisioned. At the beginning, he recalled, people would come to meetings with lists of things they wanted. When they realized that there was no money for these things, many of them stopped coming. "But others stuck with it," he said, "educating themselves, committing their time and their own resources for their own development."

Edgar Mora, president of the Machala Special Management Zone, said there were other, deeper reasons for the slow pace of change. "We Ecuadorians are accustomed to paternalism, where the government exists only to give to us," he said. "It was difficult to convince people that they must do their part." He recounted one instance when the coastal management program provided a boat to each of two local transport cooperatives so that they would use the earnings to buy more boats. "But after they received the boats, that was that," said Mora.

He realized that his big job was to change people's mentalities, and as a first step he opened up his committee's work to many more people by setting up separate commissions for tourism, mangroves, sanitation and many other areas. Eventually, some 35 different groups in Machala, many of which had previously had little to do with each other, were working together to get things done. For example, the environmental sanitation commission joined with the municipal government and the local university to carry out a project to map the estuary as a first step toward an environmental clean-up program.

People are learning that they can make a difference. "We had always been forgotten because we are not educated and have no experience working with the authorities," said fisherman Faustino Curia Huari of a small fishing community near Machala.

Curia decided that the community needed a dock because the beach was crowded with racks for drying fish, leaving no place to tie up boats. But when he formed a committee to apply to the management program for funds to buy materials, many of his neighbors thought he was crazy. He and the committee went ahead, and the proposal was accepted. The materials arrived, and after two weeks of work by the community members, the dock was a reality.

A new vocabulary. Community participation is not for people who are easily discouraged or who are in a hurry, particularly when working in settings where the local population has limited schooling and little experience in carrying out joint activities.

"We have to have a great deal of patience," said Héctor Ayón, former executive director of the Guayaquil-based Coastal Management Office, "and to be tolerant and at the same time very firm, because we are up against a factor in this country that very few people are prepared to recognize.

"This factor," said Ayón, "is the low educational level of our people." They must be taught how to make a living from the coastal resources without damaging the environment, and change must come from within the community, he said. "Those who use the resources, who have the option of damaging or not damaging the resources, are those that have to commit themselves to finding a solution," Ayón added.

Through meetings and training programs, the people are learning. "They now will say, ‘These chemicals are killing us'," said Arturo Maldonado, program coordinator in the Machala Puerto Bolívar Jambelí special management zone, something they never would have said previously. Today, when the people talk of their estuary, they discuss hydrocarbons and chemicals and the need for protection. "Just a week ago, a neighborhood group came to us and said, ‘Look, we want to have a new minga (cooperative work crew) because we have pollution problems in the estuary.' Already we have had mingas here that have represented 17 million sucres in labor costs. Two years ago we had a thousand people here participating in a minga." At first they said they merely wanted a ‘barrio limpio,'or clean neighborhood, he added, but now they want to go one step further to make a ‘barrio lindo' or pretty neighborhood.

According to Maldonado, even the shrimp farmers are changing their views. "Before they would tell us ‘I don't cut mangroves any more; I just prune them'," he said, referring to the practice of cutting off the tops of the trees to produce a better view of their shrimp growing operations, in particular to spot thieves. But now, he said, many are leaving the trees alone, partly because they regard them as a kind of ornamentation.

"This doesn't mean that shrimp farmers have stopped cutting trees," said the University of Rhode Island's Arriaga. "But at least responsible individuals and groups are helping to replant."

Another sign of progress has been the reduction of tensions. For example, the local mariculture association asked for a list of shrimp farmers who were cutting mangroves so that they, as fellow shrimp farmers, could take action. The same group requested information from the committee about instances where shellfish gatherers have had problems in getting access to mangrove swamps, again so that they could take action on the gatherers' behalf.

Many of the participants in zonal committee meetings represented groups that had long been at odds with each other. "At the beginning, we had a very hard time getting people together," said Maldonado. "Each group--fishermen, the shellfish gatherers, shrimp larvae fishermen--said ‘we have no reason to talk with the others.' But communication has improved, and now the shrimp farmers themselves are asking for more frequent meetings to work out problems."

One remaining challenge is getting the participation of the provincial authorities, who prefer to manage from above, as they always have, said Maldonado. Another problem is that government agencies with jurisdiction over coastal issues are organized according to sectors, instead of multisectorally, as the local committees are. But here again, the officials are starting to join in.

"People are probably the most important component of the natural resources that we have to manage," said Ayón, the former coastal management director. "We are talking about management of the mangroves, management of shrimp larvae, land management. But all of that is ultimately directed at improving the living conditions of people. This is more important than carrying out physical works, more even than the preservation of the enormous biodiversity that we have in this country, because if man does not manage these resources well, all of this biodiversity disappears."

He recalled a conversation he had with a woman, a shellfish gatherer, in a tiny coastal community. She called the mangrove swamp "my farm," something that she hoped to leave to her children. This is Ayón's hope as well.