Environment: what is the largest free fishing corridor in Latin American waters agreed at COP26?

The long-awaited COP26 climate summit, which is taking place these days in the Scottish city of Glasgow, is already the scene of the first international agreements. And one of them is focused on Latin America.

This Tuesday, coinciding with the global commitments signed to curb deforestation and reduce the emission of methane gas, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica agreed to an agreement to create a ecological zone free from fishing in its waters in the Pacific Ocean.

The so-called Marine Corridor of the Eastern Tropical Pacific (CMAR) will have an extension of 500,000 square kilometers and will connect the Galapagos Islands in Ecuador, Malpelo Island in Colombia, and Cocos and Coiba, located in the territorial waters of Costa Rica and Panama.

“We are going to protect ecosystems such as Galapagos and the Cocos Islands, which are among the most valuable in the world,” said the president of Costa Rica, Álvaro Quesada, during the signing of the agreement.

The main objective of the initiative is to protect the migratory species that annually transit the area and that are not affected by commercial fishing.

“We will work with these countries to connect our waters and form a safe migration path for many species,” explained the Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, when signing the agreement.

In July of last year the alerts were triggered in Ecuador when they detected a fleet of more than 260 fishing boats, mostly with the Chinese flag, off the Galapagos Islands.

And patrols were carried out to ensure that they did not access the delicate ecosystem from international waters and thus avoid a repetition of scenes like the one experienced in 2017, when they intercepted a Chinese vessel in the marine reserve with 300 tons of wildlife, most of them sharks.

Upon signing the agreement to create the corridor, Lasso told the BBC that it is a separate initiative from that incident. “This is a decision of the Ecuadorian government”, he clarified.

And he added that in his most recent conversation with Chinese President Xi Jinping he felt “a clear commitment to respect Ecuador’s maritime zone” and that, therefore, he hopes that the scenes of 2020 will not be repeated.

Lasso also said that his government wants to show that action is more effective than words to fight climate change.

Marine biodiversity

The free fishing corridor is an initiative that has been in the making for 17 years.

Already in 2004 the governments of these four countries signed a commitment to extend the protected areasof their territories on the Pacific.

At that time they began to create environmental protection zones around their islands, in which There are no large settlements, but there is one of the highest concentrations of marine biodiversity in the world.

One of the most notable efforts was that of Ecuador, which created a protected area of ​​133,000 square kilometers around the Galapagos, to which now, in light of the new commitment, it will add another 60,000 square kilometers.

In addition to the migratory ones, there are species that develop their reproductive cycle on the coasts of these countries.

This is the case of five of the seven species of sea ​​turtles that exist in the world and that they spawn there, especially on the coasts of Panama.

In addition, the fauna encompassed by the corridor includes whales (blue and humpback), as well as several species of tuna, shark, manta ray, billfish (also known as swordfish, striped marlin, blue marlin, and sailfish) and sea ​​birds.

They are endangered species not only by the overexploitation of resources that endanger marine habitats, but also by industrial fishing methods that include trawl nets. Many species that have no commercial value are trapped and killed by this type of fishing.

At 500,000 square kilometers, the corridor will be “the largest marine reserve in the West.”, according to the Colombian government.

When unveiling the pact, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson described the effort as a “bold, ambitious and crucial initiative for conservation efforts in this beautiful region.”

Nevertheless, some ask to analyze the plan from a “more realistic perspective”.

Jorge Jiménez, director of the MarViva foundation that works in the area, recognizes that the area does indeed have a strong connection. “For example, (it exists) between Galapagos and Coco, or Galapagos and Malpelo,” he told the AP news agency.

But he also stressed that it is necessary to consolidate “concrete actions in institutional mechanisms to achieve such coordination.”

Debt swap

The creation of a reserve of such magnitude requires a great investment.

It is necessary to maintain control over such a wide space on the high seas and avoid fishing exploitation, but also for scientific research and environmental conservation.

On the other hand, as the Andean Development Corporation (CAF, made up of 19 countries from Latin America, the Caribbean, Europe and 13 private banks, is one of the main sources of multilateral financing), activities related to tourism and maritime transport are also carried out in the corridor area. of fishing, which invoice about US $ 3,000 million annually, something to take into account when expanding the protected area.

Given this, CAF announced that it will contribute US $ 1 million as technical cooperation to the project.

To this was added the proposal presented by the Ecuadorian president to finance the CMAR program: debt swap for conservation.

“We estimate that it will be the largest amount of debt-for-conservation swap that has been carried out so far in the world,” Lasso said during a news conference Tuesday, without giving details on the amount.

And added that is analyzing some proposals from debt holders with the idea of ​​financing part of the project.

The debt-for-conservation swap is a financing system that was implemented in the 1980s in several countries.

It is similar to the debt-for-equity swap, but with a slight difference: there is no profit of money, but of funds for the conservation of nature.

“Through this system, funds are obtained for national conservation initiatives, based on the debt-to-equity conversion model, in which private sector agents buy debt at a lower price and exchange it for investments in national currency in the indebted country”, explains in a United Nations document Professor James P. Resor, advisor to the World Conservation Fund for Nature.

“The differentiating element in this mechanism is that there is no transfer of ownership or repatriation of capital to a foreign investor, but the funds go to conservation activities ”, he adds.

It is a mechanism that has already been used in the region, such as for the Cuyabenos reserve in Ecuador or the Beni biosphere reserve in Bolivia, one of the first projects to be financed in this way.

On the other hand, several experts see this environmental decision as a commercial opportunity.

This is the case of Sandy Tudhope and Meriwether Wilson, researchers from the University of Edinburgh, who assure that the new area will also benefit fishermen.

“Marine protection is often identified as a way to support fishing,” Tudhope told the BBC.

“If you get the protection areas correct, they act as farming areas and you get a benefit from these areas that sustains the fisheries that surround them,” he added.