Capacity building to achieve sustainable fisheries management in Mexico

Achieving sustainable fisheries management is an enormous challenge and involves the enhancement of scientific and technological management capacities worldwide. The improvement of this capacity building (CB) is particularly crucial to developing countries with massive fisheries such as Mexico. To understand the current status of CB in Mexico, the contemporary development of its academic research system was examined by undertaking a bibliographic review of specialized literature, including research institutions and postgraduate programs. The resulting information was considered as Mexican CB indicators and its theoretical and spatio-temporal analysis revealed capabilities are increasingly supporting research topics related to advancing sustainable fisheries development. However, because the recent and tumultuous development of the Mexican academic research system, much of the knowledge accumulated centers on commercial resources, and the renovation of the system itself is geographically inconsistent. In this paper, some key insights on how to improve Mexican CB process are highlighted. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.