SocMon assessment : fishery livelihoods in Copper Bank, Chunox and Belize City Fishery livelihoods in Copper Bank, Chunox and Belize City

"An important group of households from Chunox, Copper Bank and Belize City are significantly dependent on coastal and marine resources for sustenance. As true with many human activities, the fishing industry can have negative impacts on the marine environment which supports these communities. It is therefore critical to have an understanding of not only the biological, but also socioeconomic factors, in order to manage fishery activities in a sustainable and efficient manner. The aim of this assessment is to provide BAS and the communities with basic information that can contribute to improving the effectiveness of decision making, interventions and organization with respect to the management of fisheries and other marine resources. To that end, we conducted a livelihood analysis of the fishermen. Belize City was for baseline for the newly established marine protected area Turneffe Reef Atoll. The document is structured as follows: Section 2 describes the research approach and the instruments used for the data collection and analysis. This is followed by a brief presentation of some critical features of the historical development of the lobster and conch fishery industry in Belize that helps to determine the current challenges for sustainable fishery management and briefly describes the sites where the assessment was conducted. This is followed by Section 3, which presents a summary of village and household-level livelihood characteristics that were encountered during our field work, which focused on the asset status of fishery households, the income-generating activities they engage in and the institutional environment in which livelihood strategies are adopted and adapted. Finally, the household-level findings are linked back to the general level management strategies with a view to identifying weaknesses and gaps in these strategies that need to be addressed if real progress in sustainable fishery management in Lighthouse and Turneffe Atoll is to be achieved"--Introduction. 2014 Project no. 183 NOS (National Ocean Service) CoRIS (Coral Reef Information System) Library Public Domain 1936