The development of the mangrove in Ceará state, northeastern Brazil, is limited by local environmental and climatic factors, associated with the variables that determine the region’s semi-arid climatic conditions. The same conditions also contribute to the installation of artisanal saltworks in estuarine environments. The artisanal production of salt peaked in the 20th century, but with the decline of this activity, the salt evaporation ponds were abandoned, and have been incorporated back into the natural marine-estuarine environment and colonized by mangrove forests. In the early 2000s, however, the expansion of shrimp farming operations impacted this same environment. The present study was based on a spatiotemporal analysis of the natural regeneration of the mangrove vegetation in abandoned salt pond areas in the Brazilian semi-arid region between 1968 and 2009. The integrated analysis of mangrove ecosystem dynamics and the legislation that regulates the licensing of these economic activities identified a number of technical problems in the formulation and execution of the COEMA resolution 02/2002, which permits the installation of shrimp farms in areas dominated by the mangrove. The findings of the present study reinforce the need for a careful reformulation of the Ceará state environmental legislation, in order to guarantee the maximum possible conservation of the coastal zone.