Sustainable Fisheries

Special collection

Worldwide, small-scale coastal fisheries contribute significantly to providing food, employment, and incomes to many very poor people. But these same fisheries, and the ecosystems upon which they rely, are under increasing threat from a combination of climate change, pollution, over-fishing, and the exploitation of resources.


Fisheries management has been a major component in trying to address some of these issues, but with limited global success. The potential of fisheries, if managed well, is considerable but what form that potential will take will depend on how and why fisheries are managed.


This collection of reports and presentations explores just this question, describing some of the challenges faced by small-scale fisheries worldwide and their efforts to address these challenges and improve the health and well-being of the people who are dependent on these threatened environments.


The collection brings together the "grey literature" of the field, valuable work that is not readily available through academic journals and databases but is instead spread across dozens of organizational websites. This set of reports was initially identified as part of a synthesis review of key lessons commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation's Program on Oceans and Fisheries. We are pleased to make it more easily available for others to use and build on and encourage researchers and practitioners to add relevant work to the collection.

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Past and Current Methods of Community Base Coastal Resources Management in the Southern Coast of Belize

September 1, 2001

The main problem definition of this study is the need to generate community-based management of coastal resources for the benefit of the small man and woman in the South Coast of Belize in opposition to the large scale and multinationally controlled shrimp aquaculture and banana agro-processing that have taken control of the area within the past two decades. So far the avenues for small-scale development which unlike large-scale investment, filter throughout the community, are artisanal fishery and tourism using the bountiful maritime, coastal, and riverine resources. By focusing on community-based coastal resource management in the past and present, the aim of the study is to show that there had been such a tradition in the past and that its review can help in re-introducing it at this time. In uncovering its data, the study used oral history, ethnography, and varied efforts of a collaborating NGO Toledo Institute for Development and the Environment (TIDE) in natural sciences data collection and community mobilization. Briefly the approach is that with negligible use of history, aesthetics, and cosmology, the community should work together to help diversify the national economy, conserve fishery, and maintain welcoming social structures for tourists visiting the marine protected areas.