Development of management plans for the Gulf of Tribugá mangroves, Colombia Development of management plans for the Gulf of Tribugá mangroves, Colombia
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- Published on Monday, 19 December 2011 21:57
- Written by Super User
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Knowledge of the mangroves is essential for the formulation of management plans and determination of the areas to conserve. | © MarViva / Juan Manuel DÍAZ |
Bogotá, Colombia.- In the Ethno-development plan of the Los Riscales Community Council, the highest northern Choco ethnic and cultural authority, resource management is a priority and MarViva is committed to the participatory formulation of management plans for the conservation and use of this highly important resource by those who inhabit the Colombian Pacific territory.
The residents of Nuquí have made a living for decades from the mangroves of the Gulf of Tribugá. The mangrove ecosystem and its associated resources such as firewood, piangua clams, crabs, fish and game animals have been a fundamental part of the lives of the Afro-Colombian inhabitants of the Pacific region. Lumber for house construction, firewood for cooking, food resources, transport via the estuaries and income generation are other services the mangroves offer, in addition to being a protective barrier against wave action, control of coastal erosion, nursery for fish and other animals, and other direct benefits of this rich and valuable ecosystem.
For years the population of Nuquí has maintained a relationship of control and respect toward the mangroves, expressed through their traditional forms of use and exploitation to maintain what still exists in the Gulf today. Despite the massive extraction of bark in the 1950s and 60s and the timber business that some outsiders had in the 1970s, the mangroves have maintained their capacity for regeneration, and most have managed to survive these attacks.
However, these threats remain, as does the possibility of an extractive boom due to rapid population growth and growing urban development driven by the construction of a road to sea or the renowned port of Tribugá.
Toward this end, the Los Riscales Council has had an Ethno-development Plan since 2007 that calls for participatory territorial planning to define areas where particular activities will be developed, including the areas to be restored, areas to be conserved and areas where agricultural use can be developed, as well as hunting, fishing and other human activities that are carried out in the territory.
One of the areas that the community supervises is the mangroves, the floodplain forest that grows at the mouths of all the rivers of the coast; the largest ones are in inlets such as Tribugá or the estuaries near the shore.
In the way that the Ethno-development Plan organizes land use, the mangrove management plan organizes exploitation and use based on criteria and guidelines defined by and with the mangrove user communities that will allow current sustainable use and the conservation of this resource for future generations.
In order to organize a territory, one must understand and appreciate it, because if at any given moment the community is forced to impact part of the mangrove resource for their own use or the benefit of some work or project, they must have sufficient social, environmental, economic and cultural arguments that will allow them to negotiate mitigation or compensation measures for the impacts caused by that work. Undoubtedly, this is a valuable planning tool for the use of the mangroves.
Aware of the urgency and need to implement the Plan, in 2008 the Los Riscales Council negotiated the first resources from the Ministry of the Environment, Housing and Territorial Development (MAVDT) in order to zone the mangroves of Jurubirá, Tribugá, Nuquí and Panguí. The reason for focusing efforts on these four (4) communities at that time was the existence of a clear threat from work on the planned roadway to the sea.
Maps from the project’s Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) showed how Jurubirá and Panguí would be sources of materials, while Tribugá and Nuquí would be directly on the project route. This first study also had support from the Natural Heritage Fund for the preparation of base mapping.
With the preliminary zoning map of these ecosystems in 2009, Riscales began the process of preparing the respective management plans in participatory fashion, a process that as of March 2011 has already made significant progress and yielded important products such as: 1) the spatial delimitation of mangrove areas for preservation, restoration and sustainable use, 2) accurate calculation of the surface area of each category, 3) guidelines or standards and management actions proposed by the participating communities, and 4) the initial identification of possible productive alternatives as compensation to the conservation effort proposed by the mangrove users.
This major effort led and managed by the Los Riscales Council and its team has so far had the support and participation of the MarViva Foundation, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Corporation for the Sustainable Development of the Chocó (Codechocó), the Ministry of the Environment, Housing and Territorial Development, the José Benito Vives De Andréis Institute for Marine and Coastal Research (Invemar), Conservation International (CI) and Utría National Nature Park. At present, this process is being strengthened with support from USAID and the Natural Heritage Fund.
In the stage that is starting now, the results of the work done so far by these four communities will be returned and disseminated to rest of the communities and inhabitants of the northern coast of the Gulf of Tribugá so that the municipality will be made aware of the proposals contained in the Management Plan. Each community should become familiar with, understand and defend the guidelines and conditions that the mangrove-owning community has established, and the agreements that should be reached for the sound use and exploitation of their mangroves.
By the end of 2011, the municipality of Nuquí and its collective territory will have management plans implemented and monitored by government and local authorities defined by the local people; all of this will be incorporated into the Territorial Planning Scheme (TPS) for the region in accord with their Ethno-development Plan.
