Ministry of the Environment - MMA During the 4th Brazilian Congress on Conservation Units, held in Curitiba, Paraná in October 2004, the Ministry of the Environment through its Protected Areas Directorate - DAP of the Biodiversity and Forests Secretariat - SBF launched the Series ‘Protected Areas of Brazil’. The aim of the series is to register the results of studies and xperiments, disseminate information, discuss ideas and in this way heighten the efficiency of actions related to the creation and implementation of Protected Areas. In offering supporting elements for the discussions of the various government sectors and society at large around the theme of Protected Areas, the Ministry of the Environment hopes to contribute within its own sphere of action to transforming its directives - Strengthening the National Environment System - into reality. The series “Protected Areas of Brazil” can already boast of three publications: “Knowledge and Social Representations of Conservation Units of the Delegates to the National Conference on the Environment”, “Participative Management of the National Conservation Units System” and “Guidelines for Visitation in Conservation Units”. Continuing the series, the Biodiversity and Forests Secretariat jointly with the DAP and IBAMA’s ProVárzea Project has organized the publication of another volume with articles seeking to make Brazilian experiences in the use of protected aquatic areas as an instrument for fisheries Management widely known. The object of the present publication is to broaden and disseminate this new management concept and knowledge of such practices to other protected areas and related sectors. There has been increasing dissemination of the concept that protected aquatic areas are essential to conserve the biodiversity of the oceans and the continental waters and allied to that, ever since the nineties, has been the idea that they are also essential for maintaining fishery productivity. Various authors and specialists have pointed out that establishing these protected areas is an excellent instrument for recuperating collapsed stocks or those considered to be Threatened, serving as they do, as nursery areas and sources of individuals that emigrate to adjacent areas. Such studies have already been incorporated in international directives and commitments as in the recommendations of the Durban Accord of the 5th World Parks Congress – IUCN/2003, in the recommendations of the Technical Group of Specialists in Marine and Coastal Protected Areas of the Convention on Biological Diversity, the recommendations of the 26th meeting of the FAO Fisheries Commission (Rome 2005), in the resolutions of the 9th meeting of the Conference of the Parties on Internationally Important Wetlands – Ramsar Convention, (Uganda 2005) and internally, in the National Protected Areas Plan (Decree5.758/06). More recently, the process of updating priority areas for conservation, sustainable use and sharing of biodiversity benefits has incorporated the concept in its initial design for a representative system of marine and coastal protected areas (Decree 5.092/2004 and Ministry of the Environment Decree Nº 9/2007). In Brazil’s case, the vast extension of the coastline allied to a great diversity of ecosystems and species led to the idea of an inexhaustible potential for exploitation and consequently to the adoption of development policies with little or no concern for sustainability of the use of its resources. As a result, recent data have shown that although marine fisheries contribute over 63% of the total Brazilian fish production, 80% of the resources economically exploited are over-fished (REVIZEE data). On the other hand, the socio-economic importance of fishing activities in Brazil is undeniable, not only as a supplier of animal protein for human consumption, but also in generating around 800,000 jobs in the marine areas alone making up a contingent of about 4 million people who depend directly or indirectly on the sector. The Coastal and Marine Zone Division (Nucleus) began its debate on the importance of using marine and coastal conservation units and no-take (areas) zones as instruments for fisheries management to be intermediated by a variety of means. That approach is aimed at pooling the efforts of traditionally used instruments as well as introducing an ecosystemic vision into Brazilian fishing. Incorporating as it does, all other protected aquatic areas, this articulation extends to the implementation of the principles of the Ramsar Convention and the spreading of information on advances obtained in protected inland waters. Outstanding among the challenges to be faced are those actions inherent to changing a paradigm like disseminating the concept, demonstrating case study evidence, implanting participative management of fishery resources, undertaking capacity building for technical staff and administrators, and convincing decision makers. Furthermore, co-responsibility for running the conservation units shared with the fishermen and other social actors that depend on such areas is very important and to that end it is necessary that information, Communication and above all, the organization of those segments should be efficient. The Ministry of the Environment invited researchers and technical staff that work in this field to contribute to this publication by sending in their experiences and scientific papers and these have been incorporated in the present volume. Thus we have an initiative that brings together various papers and articles some of which have already been published and others which are being published for the first time, in order to reveal Brazilian experiences in this field to the target public. It is with much honor that we present volume 4 of the Protected Areas Series Protected Aquatic Areas as Fisheries Management Tools. João Paulo Ribeiro Capobianco Executive Secretary |