The Gulf of Mexico Large Marine Ecosystem (GoM‐LME) is shared by Cuba, Mexico and the United States. It is one of the most productive marine ecosystems in the world, and an important global reservoir of biodiversity. However, this high productivity is at risk from a range of anthropogenic threats that include excessive fishing, destruction of critical coastal and marine habitats, and nutrient‐enrichment resulting in one of the largest hypoxic zones in the world. Additionally, many fishing stocks are over‐fished, or are close to their maximum yield. Intensive fishing, the primary force driving biomass changes in the Gulf, is compounded by two other significant factors: habitat modification, including loss of critical habitats; and connectivity, resulting from poorly planned growth in the Gulf’s coastal and urban areas, which translates into a trend of urban growth at the expense of estuaries, marshes, sea grasses, coral reefs, mangroves and other vital ecotones.

The GOM‐LME Project is a Global Environment Facility partially funded initiative that launched its activities in June, 2009. It aims at removing identified constraints and barriers, developing common mechanisms and tools, and promoting reforms and investments, to set the bases for application of the ecosystem‐based management (EBM) approach in the management of the GoM‐LME. This will be complemented through capacity‐building activities and pilot projects in three critical aspects of the EBM approach: productivity, conservation and adaptive management, and cross‐sectoral engagement, including solid monitoring and evaluation frameworks for each component.

The project’s global benefit will result in an enhanced understanding of LME functions, to serve as input into LME management strategies. The project aims to respond to these threats through an ecosystem‐based management framework, allowing the countries of the Gulf to strengthen the Gulf’s living resources, and address land‐based and marine pollution, including the reduction of nutrient loads that contribute to hypoxic zones in the region.

Objective

To set the foundations for LME‐wide ecosystem‐based management approaches to rehabilitate marine and coastal
ecosystems, recover depleted fish stocks, and reduce pollution and nutrient overloading.

Main activities

Updating the Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA)
• Formulation of the Strategic Action Program (SAP) and associated National Action
Programs (NAP’s)
• Implementation of three demonstration projects in Laguna de Términos, Campeche,
Mexico:
⇒ “Natural Habitat and Ecosystem Conservation of Coastal and Marine Zones of
the Gulf of Mexico: Wetlands, Mangroves, Sea Grass Beds and Sand Dunes”
⇒ “Joint Assessment and Monitoring of Coastal Conditions in the Gulf of Mexico”
⇒ “Restoring Depleted Shrimp Stocks through Ecosystem Based Management Practices in the Gulf of Mexico
Large Marine Ecosystem”