Ecuador’s Ministry of Aquaculture and Fisheries and the conservation organization WWF have signed a memorandum of understanding to promote the sustainable management of fisheries and the competitiveness of the fishing sector.
The agreement, signed in Manta, ratifies the government’s commitment to ensure the responsible capture of fishery resources and includes WWF’s support in the process of designing and implementing improvement projects as well as the conservation and management of species.
The parties highlighted the importance of fishery resources for the Ecuadorian economy and society as well as the need to promote fisheries management and the competitiveness of the fishing sector, with an ecosystem approach to ensure that these resources continue to be used in a sustainable manner.
The cooperation agreement, which will be valid for four years, also seeks to deepen the economic and environmental benefits of the fishing activity, which represented revenues in foreign currency for the country for USD 1,559.3 million in 2017.
“The overexploitation of marine resources has negative repercussions for food security and sustainable economic development, significantly affecting the social welfare of communities that have fish as their main source of protein and income,” ensured the Minister of Aquaculture and Fisheries, Katuska Drouet, when signing the agreement.
“The settlement of this agreement points to the right path to seek to introduce improvements in the value chain of the sector, with the sustainable management of fisheries and improving their competitiveness with an ecosystem approach. It is essential to manage aquatic resources responsibly and efficiently in order to ensure the long-term fishing sustainability and its contribution towards achieving food security,” she added.
The agreement expresses a firm and determined commitment on the part of the Ministry of Aquaculture and Fisheries to implement committed management to the sectors of the most vulnerable artisanal fishermen, with a focus on improving production chains based on effective control and finding an optimal balance with the industrial sector to ensure the integral development of the country and its people, which will have the technical cooperation of WWF.
“The agreement is an expression of institutional commitment to work in the conservation of resources. We can not eat more fish than that that can be produced in the wild. We have to maintain our consumption and our behaviour within certain limits of sustainability, otherwise the fisheries collapse,” warned Hugo Arnal, Country Director of WWF.
Some of the commitments of both institutions are: the implementation of projects to improve the mahi mahi fishery based on the National Action Plan for the Conservation and Sustainable Management of the Mahi Mahi Resource; support the implementation of the Mahi Mahi Fisheries Improvement Project (FIP) action plan, whose final purpose is to prepare the fishery for the mahi mahi resource so that it can obtain the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) certification; technical cooperation in the design and implementation of the National Action Plan for the Conservation and Management of Sharks, among others.
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