What is MarViva?
MarViva is a regional, non-governmental and non-profit making organisation dedicated to the conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal resources by protecting and supporting the management of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
The MarViva project came to life thanks to the vision of Erica Knie, founder and chairperson of the organisation who, after heading the coastal-marine initiatives of the Avina Foundation in Latin America for ten years, decided to direct her efforts towards counteracting the deterioration occurring in the Marine Protected Areas of the Tropical Eastern Pacific.
Illegal fishing, increasingly aggressive extraction methods and the absence of rational and sustainable management of coastal and marine resources have had an enormous impact on most of marine ecosystems, compromising and putting at risk the source of food and income of many coastal communities.
MarViva was thus born as civil society?s attempt to face the problems affecting marine protected areas, both insular and coastal, of Latin America; it introduces an innovative approach to marine environmental protection that aims to foster collaboration on a local level between the citizens, the private and the public sectors.
