The Violence of Development: Resource Depletion, Environmental Crises and Human Rights Abuses in Central America by Martin Mowforth

Author:Martin Mowforth [Mowforth, Martin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780745333946
Amazon: 074533394X
Goodreads: 18927067
Publisher: Pluto Press
Published: 2014-03-20T00:00:00+00:00

Table 6.3Central American wetlands under the Ramsar Convention

Country contracting to the Ramsar Convention Number of Ramsar sites Surface area (hectares)

Belize 2 23,592

Costa Rica 12 569,742

El Salvador 6 192,960

Guatemala 7 628,592

Honduras 6 223,320

Nicaragua 8 405,691

Panama 5 183,992

Central America 46 2,227,889

Source: Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, www.ramsar.org/, accessed 23 May 2011.

The Nicaraguan example above hints at the disdain that shrimp farmers have for local communities and the environment, but the following Honduran example brings us closer to the real violence of the transnational shrimp-farming companies. Jorge Varela Márquez is director of the Committee for the Defence and Development of the Flora and Fauna of the Gulf of Fonseca (CODDEFFAGOLF). Varela’s 2010 report illustrates the problems of mangrove destruction with examples of shrimp farm expansion in the wetland protected areas around the Gulf of Fonseca.95 Extracts from the report are given on the Violence of Development website. The extracts detail the complicity of the Honduran Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment in mangrove destruction and environmental crimes to make way for shrimp farms run by a number of TNCs, amongst them the Spanish company El Faro. Varela suggests that the expansion of shrimp aquaculture in Honduras is completely unplanned, its only restrictions being the growth of shrimp diseases, the fall in international shrimp prices, falling demand and sometimes pressure from local communities.

In 2003, the WRM reported that in Honduras, industrial shrimp production was unsustainable, leading to the felling of mangroves, loss of lagoons and contamination of estuaries. For the affected local communities,

the installation of shrimp farms has brought with it the loss of access to their traditional sources of food, firewood and income and lack of respect for their human rights, leading to twelve murders of fishermen and various other people injured by bullets in events related to shrimp farm security officials.96

The killing of fisherman Yelson García in August 2012 was the latest of the murders. His family have formally accused the guards of the Granjas Marinas San Bernardo shrimp farm of seizing Yelson and later presenting his lifeless body, showing signs of torture. For his part in exposing the illegal destruction of mangroves and for highlighting the irregularities in environmental licences held by shrimp farmers, Jorge Varela has been subjected to defamation and threats.97

This history of mangrove destruction around the Gulf of Fonseca explains why in 2009 the governments of Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador (with Spanish assistance) initiated the Mangrove Corridor to protect the environment and promote sustainable development in the mangrove swamp areas from Jiquilisco Bay in the north to the Estero Real in the south.98 Most of these areas are rich in molluscs and provide significant livelihoods for many small communities. The activities promoted as part of the Mangrove Corridor project are aimed more at artisanal fishing communities than large-scale producers. Roberto Rodríguez of the Central American Commission on the Environment and Development (CCAD) said, ‘what we are looking for is to give the population alternatives that permit a reduction in extractive activities’.99 It seems strange that the CCAD and

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