Within the framework of reducing threats to marine biodiversity, maintaining essential ecosystem services and improving the welfare of coastal communities in marine areas and facilitating dialogue and intergovernmental coordination between Haiti and the Republic Dominican Republic, The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Dominican Council for Fisheries and Aquaculture (CODOPESCA), the Fisheries Division of Haiti and representatives of the Ministries of the Environment of both countries, as well as the Commission Mixed Bilateral (CMB) dominico-Haitian, held the 3rd meeting on the sustainable management of coastal and marine resources.

Francisco Núñez, Director of TNC's Greater Antilles Program, said the two nations have been proactively involved in finding solutions to common problems through a series of meetings, the first of which took place in Haiti in October 2016.

A second meeting was held in Saint-Domingo in July 2017, in which the areas of collaboration and the specific activities identified were discussed, which made it possible to outline a proposal for an action plan with four strategic axes: automation of Haiti's fishing information systems, promotion of best practices and implementation of existing legislation.

The purpose of this 3rd meeting was to validate the binational action plan and its implementation approach, serving as a scenario for executing the first of the activities included in the plan. In agreement, the technicians of the Fisheries Division of Haiti will receive an introduction to the system of fishery statistics that CODOPESCA uses in the Dominican Republic to establish similar fishing records that can be used in the sustainable management of fisheries resources.

This binational action plan is an ambitious initiative, which hopes to generate synergies with other feasible initiatives of interest to both governments, which will support international organizations and multilateral cooperation interested in supporting the plan.

This activity was sponsored by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) as part of its Caribbean Program for the Conservation of Marine Biodiversity with the collaboration of the Dominican Red Arrecifal Dominicana Network (RAD) and Reef Check

SL/ HaitiLibre