Environmental Issues of a Marine Protected Area in a Tectonic Estuary in the Tropical Eastern Pacific:Uramba(Malaga Bay Colombia):Context,Biodiversity,Threats and Challenges

作     者：Jaime Ricardo Cantera Kintz Edgardo Londono-Cruz Luz Marina Mejia-Ladino Leonardo Herrera-Orozco Carlos Andres Satizabal Natalia Uribe-Castaneda 

作者机构：Research Group in Estuaries and Mangroves of Colombian PacificDepartamento de BiologiaUniversidad del ValleCaliColombia Research Group in TaxonomySystematic and Marine EcologyInstituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras“Jose Benito Vives de Andreis”Santa MartaColombia 

出 版 物：《Journal of Water Resource and Protection》 (水资源与保护（英文）)

年 卷 期：2013年第5卷第11期

页      面：1037-1047页

学科分类：1002[医学-临床医学] 100214[医学-肿瘤学] 10[医学] 

基　　金：Funding for execution of the Project Vulnerabilidad de los ecosistemas marinos y costeros de Bahía Málaga(Pacífico colombiano):amenazas naturales y antrópicas has been supported by Colciencias through grant No.110652128786 RC 315-2011 Universidad del Valle(Cali Colombia) and Invemar(Santa Marta Colombia). 

主　　题：Protected Marine Areas Resources Conservation Estuaries Tropical Eastern Pacific 

摘      要：The environmental protection of tropical marine and coastal areas faces different challenges due to the diversity of aspects related to these areas, which include natural, social and economical issues. Despite these challenges, efforts for the protection of these areas are urgent nowadays because of the dramatical increase of human related threats like habitat destruction and population growth. Malaga Bay (MB) is a tectonic estuarine system located in Panama Bight (central region of the Colombian Pacific coast), which due to its origin shows important environmental characteristics of few sites in the Tropical Eastern Pacific (TEP) match. For these reasons, the government of Colombia declared in 2010, the bay’s marine area as a Marine National Natural Park in order to preserve its unique estuarine marine biodiversity. Despite this measure, MB presents several conditions that make environmental protection a very difficult task. In this paper, we present the geographical context, biodiversity and natural resources, environmental threats, the complexity of economic and social context, and the institutional and legal context of MB, to exemplify the difficulty that the protection of marine areas face in the TEP.