The Intercultural Center for the Study of Deserts and Oceans (CEDO) in collaboration with local fishermen in eight coastal fishing communities of the northern Gulf of California (the Sonoran Corridor), along with various government and non-government institutions in both the US and Mexico, building on a foundation of forty years of community building, worked for more than five years to create a robust scientific and policy foundation for creating orderly and sustainable small-scale fisheries in the northern Gulf (Sea of Cortez).
This was the first time that local communities came together with one another and at this scale, achieving unprecedented government support to improve the management of their dwindling and fragile fisheries resources from the bottom-up. In 2019, together with CEDO’s then Executive Director (now Emeritus), Peggy Turk Boyer, I co-created a resource for our large bi-national and bi-lingual audience using the time-honored format of our institution’s annual calendar and tide chart.
This popular resource introduced the Sonoran Biological & Fisheries Corridor Project in the context of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a multilateral treaty that aims to help nations value, conserve, restore, and make wise use of their biodiversity and ecosystem services to sustain a healthy planet and deliver benefits that are essential for all people by 2050 (www.cbd.int). I chose for this resource the theme of assembling a jigsaw puzzle, hoping readers would associate memories of family fun and teamwork with integrated solutions to the region’s complex problems.