The role of coastal communities on the management of marine turtles in Central America: The case of Ostional Wildlife Refuge - Proyecto colaborativo entre Latin American and Caribbean Environmental Economics Program (LACEEP) y la Universidad Javeriana.

The livelihoods of poor people in many coastal areas of Central America depend heavily on marine ecosystems. The direct consumption of marine turtles (meat, eggs, shell, leather and bone) and their non-consumptive uses (mainly tourism) have had important economic and cultural benefits to these people. Beyond these, marine turtles are considered as a flagship species for conservation because of their relevance for the health of marine ecosystems as well as the passive values that the world wide community attaches to them (Troeg & Drews). Despite all these benefits, different factors (mostly human) threaten the biological sustainability of these endangered species and hence, the well being of people that depend on them. Many countries recognize the need to reduce marine turtle mortality through legal protection. However, attempts to exclude users and reduce human impacts have had limited success, particularly in countries with scarce governmental budgets. As an alternative, community-based approaches aim to build on local knowledge and incentives to better define enforceable rules to the sustainable use of turtles. The conditions under which communities can devise their own institutions to manage this kind of common-pool resources have been analyzed extensively (Ostrom 1990, 2007; Agrawal 2001). However, more work is needed to understand their robustness over time to external shocks and to study what type of individual socioeconomic characteristics (economic incentives, age, gender, norms and values, among others) explain the individual compliance with a locally devised set of rules or institutions.}