| IMOLA Project > Activities > Lagoon Management Plan |
An integrated management plan is the primary objective of the IMOLA Project, built through the consensus of all those component of the population that participate to the life of the lagoon and share its resources. Integrated means that all the principal components of the system, natural (water quality, environment conservation, biological stock protection, etc), human (self-consciousness, capacity to manage the natural resources, awareness of the role of communities) and technological (aids to assist the decision process, visual tools and instrument deployment) are included in the plan.
Similarly, all the complexities of the society have to be represented and harmonized, so that more equity is achieved, the level of conflict is decreased and more sustainable use of the limited resources can be practiced in the years to come. The plan has to be flexible to adapt to the changing situations and diversification a key to better take advantage of the numerous opportunities (within the fishery sector but also outside, e.g. tourism) that a complex and dynamic environment such as the lagoon is able to offer.
Three years of study of the lagoon environment and communities, of experimentation and development of planning tools allowed us to identify the primary issues based on which the plan should be drafted and implementation experiments should be carried on in the upcoming phase, so as to offer to the Provincial administrators viable examples to put the plan into practice. The management plan will move along the following guidelines:
| ♦ | Reducing the impact of shrimp intensive monoculture by removing the least viable operations (low-tide ponds), technologically improving the better organized enterprises (treatment ponds to reduce pollution) |
| ♦ | Exploring alternatives in the sector (shifting to marine fishery, bivalve culturing techniques, integrated extensive-types of fish poly-culture models) and outside the sector (e.g. tourism) |
| ♦ | Adopting measures to be undertaken by Fishery and Aquaculture Association and District Authorities to reduce fishing pressure (e.g reducing the number of fishers, time of fishing, density of gears etc.) and enable the same associations to manage at best, together with the Authorities (co-management), the common resource |
| ♦ | Proposing intervention of restoration and re-naturalize those parts of the lagoon territory (that wetland that laid between the range of the tides, now occupied by degraded ponds) that once formed the natural reservoir and nursery ground for aquatic livestock |
| ♦ | Proposing measures to improve circulation in the lagoon, by stabilizing the tidal inlets, by favoring the exchange between inland water-masses and the sea, by resume the pristine functions of the coastal aquatic environment |
| ♦ | Zoning the lagoon water surface and shores into conservation areas and sanctuaries, ecological island and corridors, nursery and spawning grounds along with exploitation grounds for capture and aquaculture, in such a way that a balanced coverage of repopulating and production grounds allow the natural replenishment of the biological stock |
| ♦ | Proposing and integrated program of environmental monitoring and control (water and meteorological parameters, animal disease outbreaks and spreads) |
| ♦ | Strengthening the institutional support to resource co-management, by improving and streamlining the legislation and regulatory aspects, enhancing the technological capacity of planning through GIS, efficiently and convincingly involve the communities and emplace a scheme of monitoring and control |
These issues will be the focus of the discussion between the IMOLA management and all those subjects holding a stake on the lagoon, in the attempt to achieve broad consensus, adapt the plan to local community perspectives and Provincial strategies and prepare for implementation that will be done experimentally in the upcoming IMOLA second phase.
