If Ecuador's Mangroves Disappear

If Ecuador's Mangroves Disappear
Greenpeace International

From humble beginnings in the 1970s, Ecuador's shrimp industry expanded rapidly and aggressively, targeting vital coastal ecosystems in which to build gigantic shrimp farms. Today, Ecuador's shrimp industry occupies some 200,000 hectares (500,000 acres) of former mangrove forests, salt flats (salinas), and agriculture lands along the country's Pacific coast. Over the past three decades, tens of thousands of hectares of Ecuador's coastal mangrove forests became prime targets for shrimp industry expansion, as was the case in most other countries in Latin America and Asia where shrimp farming is prevalent.

Over the past ten years, as frustrated shrimp farmers abandoned diseased and overcrowded areas along the southern coast around Guayaquil where Ecuadorian shrimp farming began, the mangroves of Ecuador's northern coastal province of Esmeraldas became the new target for expansion. Corrupt government officials and land hungry illegal shrimp producers consider the mangrove forests simply wastelands, and so they collude to subvert justice and rob coastal people of their traditional homelands. Accompanying this wholesale conversion of coastal ecosystems is the decline, and in some sites the elimination, of shellfish and finfish habitat and resources, displacement of fishermen, and disruption of other traditional mangrove forestry activities such as charcoal-making and wood production.

In response to the increasing scarcity of these natural resources and denial of access to fishing and food gathering areas, the traditional users of the mangrove ecosystem along the Esmeraldas coast began to fight back. And it was in support of this noble effort that, during the last two weeks of July 1998, Greenpeace and the Ecuadorian grassroots group Fundecol joined forces to help the people of the local coastal communities defend the few stands of Ecuador's coastal mangrove forests remaining after years of destructive clearcutting. The Greenpeace flagship Rainbow Warrior, carrying scientists and activists, took action under the campaign theme "What if the Mangroves Disappear".

Along the northern coast of Esmeraldas Province near the Columbian border in the San Lorenzo area, is located the world-famous Cayape-Matajes national forest reserve. Here, in the reserve's 51,000 hectares of mangrove and tropical rainforest, the world's tallest mangrove trees reach up to 60 meters (almost 200 feet) high. Unbelievably, the shrimp aquaculture industry is busy clearcutting. The research done by Greenpeace and Fundecol produced evidence, which was presented to government officials, that some 1,118 hectares of mangroves had been destroyed during the previous year to make way for illegal shrimp farms.

Further south along the coast of Esmeraldas province, the fishing village of Muisne was another focus of action for the Greenpeace/Fundecol campaign. Ten years ago Muisne was surrounded by 20,800 hectares (52,000 acres) of life-supporting mangrove forests; today only 650 hectares (about 1,600 acres) remain, despite the fact that destruction of all mangroves has been illegal in Ecuador since 1994 by Presidential Decree #1907.94. But, the Ecuadorian government agencies responsible for protecting the mangroves claimed they are powerless to stop it the illegal shrimp investors. Even some corrupt government officials were investors themselves.

Coastal village people had been desperately trying evict the illegal shrimp producers and reforest the devastated mangrove areas around Muisne. So, in the early hours of Sunday, 26 July, some 200 village people from Muisne supported by Greenpeace and Fundecol activists used only shovels, pieces of wood, and bare hands, to cut out a breach to open up a dike of an illegal shrimp operation. When the water had drained out, the people moved in to plant mangrove seedlings to restore what had been annihilated.

 

[links to action photo section].

 

Angered by their action, the illegal shrimp farmer went to a local judge who agreed to issue arrest warrants against Greenpeace and Fundecol activists, and ordered the Rainbow Warrior to be detained in Ecuador. But, after a statement from the Environment Minister of Ecuador proving that the shrimp farmer had no authorization to build the shrimp farm in the mangroves, cracks in the lawsuit began to open up. After interrogating the judge who had issued the warrants and detention order, the President of the Supreme Court of Ecuador dismissed him and installed a new judge, who revoked the detaining order and the arrest warrants.

The Greenpeace campaign in Ecuador helped to generate new public concerns. Where previously few citizens knew little about the plight of the mangroves and the damage being done to the coastal communities, after the action in Muisne, a poll showed 84 percent support for the Greenpeace-Fundecol campaign.

Since then, the Ecuadorian government and responsible leaders of Ecuador's industry are beginning to act more responsibly, as public pressure is exerted from within Ecuador as well as from outside the country where Greenpeace has been informing consumers of the problems caused by their appetite for shrimp. Government and industry officials are now supporting Greenpeace's long-standing demand for an end to mangrove clear-cutting and for a moratorium on the expansion of the shrimp aquaculture industry. An era of constructive dialogue between affected communities, government and industry officials might be about to begin with the aim of saving and restoring Ecuador's vital coastal wetlands and mangroves. One way to ensure a good outcome, for the environment and the people affected by shrimp farming, is for consumers in the big shrimp eating markets of the United States, Japan, and Europe to stop eating shrimp or prawns if they are unsure about whether they were produced in an environmentally sound and socially responsible manner.