Ocean Economics - Abrolhos Reef, Brazil

Conservation Strategy Fund (CSF) is currently conducting economic valuation research of Marine areas in Belize, Panama and Brazil. This work is being supported by Conservation International’s Marine Management Area Science program. Valuation of ecosystem goods and services is being carried out within three formally protected marine areas: Gladden Spit (Belize), Coiba (Panama) and Abrolhos (Brazil).

Marine management challenges in most developing countries include the combined effects of over fishing, tourism and global changes affecting the health of coral reefs and other habitats, proposals of large-scale development projects (e.g. hotels), the lack of a precise identification of user-groups, resources being exploited legally and illegally within MMA and in candidate-sites for new MMAs, incipient social organization of MMAs’ beneficiaries, chronic and endemic poverty, social marginalization of fishermen and other groups that rely on natural resources extraction, weakness of institutional structures and incentives for protected areas, drug smuggling, among others. In order to be effectively addressed, these threats need to be more deeply understood.

The objective of our work in Brazil is to quantify economic values of ecosystems comprising the Abrolhos reef, and to describe the distribution of these values amongst the local fishing industry. These figures will be used as a basis to promote policies that reinforce protection of the Abrolhos reef and its natural resources, and that subsidize commercial agreements that promote economic and environmental sustainability of the local fishing industry. In particular, we hope to quantify economic benefits derived from mangroves, both within the system and in adjacent reef ecosystems. We will also make projections of the long-term benefits of fisheries management in the extractive reserves to inform local management decisions, hopefully encouraging active management of the resource and discouraging overfishing.
Status Update

The research team in Brazil is currently conducting research on values of tourism and fishing in Abrolhos.