The Blue Forests Project`s lead partner organization in Ecuador, Conservation International Ecuador (CI-Ecuador), has shared with us the story of the Ecuadorian coastal community of Las Huacas, a fishermen village that has fully committed to the sustainable management of its mangrove forests, and that has thereby ensured the production of one of the most valuable and commercially important mangrove ecosystem services for the community, the black shells. In 2009, for the first time in history, a woman named Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize of Economics. She would say, "Sometimes, bureaucrats do not have the right information, while citizens and the resource users do have it." In that same year, thousands of kilometers’ distance, a community in the south coast of Ecuador will do justice to these words and confirm to everyone why these so-called natural resources of common use, such as mangroves, can be successfully managed by communities living directly from these ecosystems. Las Huacas, is one of the six islands of the Jambelí Archipiélago, located in the coastal province of El Oro. The fishery community from Las Huacas, which has managed to recover its mangrove ecosystem in only nine years and simultaneously to multiply its local collection of shells, is now part of diverse and valuable experiences around the world that would change the course of history regarding the responsible and sustainable management of renewable natural resources. It is so in the same year; a woman's words came to life through one of the most prestigious medals for all humanity and through the efforts of 52 Ecuadorian fishermen in the province of El Oro.
Black shells
