Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation (27 page)

In 2007, the federal government launched a National Strategy on Climate Change and is now preparing a Special Programme on Climate Change to implement identified reforms. Thanks to these efforts Mexico has jumped from 14th in 2006 to 4th in 2008 out of 56 countries ranked according to their climate change performance in the Germanwatch, Climate Change Performance Index (Germanwatch, 2008). At the state level, while Quintana Roo’s rapid demographic growth and infrastructural expansion open exciting opportunities to build climate-proofing
into development, and at the same time provide a market edge around notions of climate friendly tourism, regional government and private developers have been slow to recognise climate change. In the language of transitions theory (see
Chapter 4
) this is an example of landscape (national/international) change meeting resistance at the regional (state) level. This begs the question: have any niche (local) level innovations emerged that might provide impetus for change at the regional level given the opportunity for change opened by perturbations at the landscape level?

Local impacts of climate change are felt already through perceived increases in the frequency of hurricanes, creeping sea-level rise, coastal erosion and high temperatures. These hazards are interrelated and compounded by local land use which has led to accelerated mangrove and interior deforestation, pollution and damage to in-shore reefs and the neglect of green and blue space in urban design. In contrast, state and federal agencies have a good record in containing human loss to hurricanes through timely if reactive strategies of early warning, evacuation and reconstruction of critical services. The most recent event, Hurricane Dean, 2007, caused limited economic impact across the region but made landfall close to Mahahual, which was severely damaged.

To reveal the values, capacities and actions of political actors in each urban centre an action research methodology was employed. In each settlement interviews were conducted with 12–15 leaders of social, environmental and business associations, and where formal organisation was absent amongst informal leaders. Following interviews, respondents were invited to town-level workshops to discuss results. Workshops provided an opportunity to verify reported views and interpretations, and also a vehicle for social actors to network. This was often the first time social actors had met to discuss climate change. A final workshop brought selected respondents from each settlement together to undertake a participatory comparison of town-level findings and again to provide a networking forum. Interviews and workshop texts were transcribed and data extracted and organised around the themes of development narrative, climate change, social-learning and self-organisation. Results have been fed back to civil society and government actors.

For additional material and analysis see:
http://www.kcl.ac.uk/schools/sspp/geography/research/epd/projects/hslgmc

For each case development pathways and perceived interactions with climate change are described. Innovations – from nuance to outright alternative – are identified and the capacity of civil society actors to promote such innovations assessed.

In 1974, Cancun became the first integrally planned centre for mass tourism in Mexico and it continues to act as a centre for mass tourism, providing a significant foreign currency source to the federal government and generating significant employment opportunities. The population has grown exponentially from 88,200 in 1970 to 1,135,300 in 2005, creating a huge population potentially at risk from climate change associated hazards. Since 1970 Cancun has been directly affected by Hurricanes Gilbert (1988) and Wilma (2005). Vulnerability is aggravated by the exclusion of burgeoning workers’ colonies developed on communally owned ejido lands which lie outside of the legal jurisdiction of local governments to provide basic services. Dominant development is controlled by the interests of national and international corporate capital, with many politicians having backgrounds as leading local entrepreneurs. Environmental legislation and urban plans are in place but frequent amendments and the slow pace of bureaucracy allow business interests great flexibility and resilience in the face of legislative, economic and environmental pressures – while increasing the time and transactions costs for environmental and social actors seeking to question development proposals. For example, the sensitive Nichupté Lagoon is under constant development pressure; despite an Ecological Zoning Program, hotels and squatter settlements have been allowed. The vision of Cancun as a centre for extractive capital built in a previously unoccupied zone disconnects social actors from a commitment to place and long-term planning. Reflecting on his experience, a Pez Maya Reserve fundraiser noted that ‘those who participated the least were local entrepreneurs; more than 70 per cent of funds came from overseas’. For hotel workers Cancun society is described as fragmented with traditional values of neighbourliness and a strong family replaced by consumerism and undermined by drugs crime, alcoholism and extremes of inequality. Set against this, migrant workers maintain close links with source communities; for example, by sending children to school outside Cancun.

Respondents were clear that climate change impacts were exacerbated by past, and ongoing, development: deforestation was associated with increased temperatures and reduced humidity and the development of dunes for hotels contributed to beach erosion. Hurricanes were also associated with climate change and seen as integral to the development history of the city with specific hotel developments being cited as having taken advantage of Hurricanes Gilbert and Wilma to extend land claims into protected mangroves and privatise beach fronts. The comment below from an independent journalist shows the variable nature of disaster management and the long-term psychological and cultural impacts when the state does not fulfil its responsibilities for civil protection and security.

I remember that when Gilberto came Cancun was going to celebrate the Miss Universe contest – this focused the attention of the government in Cancun. With Wilma, however, the people of Cancun were left completely on their
own. Until the army came to help two days later, the city lived in complete chaos. We stayed 15 days without electricity or water. The most incredible was the contrast between the rapid recovery of the hotel zone and the slow recovery of the rest of the population. Wilma brought a lot of despair and demoralized the population. We have not still recovered from that. People stopped to believe. Still today there is not the happiness that used to be. All this happened because we were left alone.

More positively, after Hurricane Wilma a Climate Change Association of Quintana Roo based in Cancun was founded. This small organisation has worked to promote recycling and lobbies against deforestation within existing development narratives. Elsewhere, actors seek to promote climate change in primary school syllabi. Business associations see climate change in economic terms with hotel associations needing to respond to tour operators threatening to lower tariffs or business volumes due to the poor state of the beaches. For the engineering and architecture community, climate change presents opportunities with recent projects including semi-permeable parking surfaces but with limited support from government. Overall civil society actors see their scope for action as limited compared to government which has power to revise urban planning guidelines, or simply enforce those that already exist, and this understanding of the distribution of power acts to suppress civil action and limit outright critique or confrontation of the dominant capital intensive model of development. This is despite civil society actors recognising that an emerging development paradigm that takes climate change into account can be an opportunity to enhance social development, with this being a particular concern in Cancun with its high inequality.

Civil leadership faces powerful opposition, as an environmental lawyer explained: ‘It is dangerous to litigate against some powerful groups. We have to be very cautious’. For local actors the everyday experience of living with crime, including organised protection rackets, governs people’s ability to voice complaints or instigate change. Civil society groups cited this and the culture of Cancun society, which is described as apathetic (caused by a crisis of credibility in the authorities), lacking in identity (with a diverse migrant population) and community spirit (with individuals working hard with little time for social work or volunteerism), as the main barriers to organising critical alternatives. Mass media is politicised and commercial. Individual civil society groups, lawyers or engineering companies might be competent and independent but they work alone, and often in competition, preventing the formation of a coherent social body and vision. One respondent described this as having a lack of institutional infrastructure to promote learning and new practices for adaptation and mitigation, arguing that even if people were willing, without this infrastructure changing behaviour would be slow if not impossible.

While the institutional framework for strategic innovation and adaptation was lacking in Cancun informational resources were in place. Federal state agencies (the Ecological Gazette of SEMARNAT was twice mentioned) provided scientific data available for scrutiny and that had been used by civil actors in local litigation or lobbying. The Supreme Court judgement that all documents and studies related to a development should be in the public domain had also been used by local groups to challenge developments. The Universidad del Caribe, Cancun, is a local source of promotion for sustainable tourism region-wide. Collaboration with local government has been achieved by Amigos de Sian’ Kaan in the preparation of a good practice guide for hotels that covers planning and use. In this way technical and management reform have been achieved by civil society groups to support vulnerability reduction, but social, economic, political and cultural systems remained outside discourse and unchallenged.

Playa del Carmen has a successful and growing economy based on international tourism and in 1994 became the capital of the newly created Municipality of Solidaridad. Since then, Playa has been amongst the fastest growing urban centres of Latin America (above 20 per cent annually) and at times the fastest in the world (Campos Cámara, 2007). In 2005 its population exceeded 100,000 inhabitants. Playa has experienced direct hits from hurricanes. The worst challenge came in 2005, with Emily and Wilma a few months later. However, there were no fatalities and the town recovered very rapidly. In fact, the local tourist economy benefited from the relocation of tourists from Cancun, which had been hit even harder by Wilma.

In Playa, the dominant development narrative emphasised personal economic advancement and reflected the control over the local economy held by corporate private sector. Respondents reported on a disjuncture between people and place. Residents felt they were here to ‘make money’, not to settle. The result was a lack of popular commitment to local development and for holding private sector and government actors to account, as one social development activist reported: ‘there is a lack of civic pride and identity with place – people do not care about the city or even their house and street’. Respondents described Playa as embodying an extreme version of the American Dream, celebrating individualism and materialism, and short-term gain over long-term development.

Some described climate change as a symptom of a larger problem of consciousness and the alienating effect of rapid urbanisation; as one respondent put it, ‘We increasingly behave like machines – we need to go back to our community and our roots’. More broadly climate change could be a vehicle to hold the government to account if citizens became more engaged in governance. Adaptation (and mitigation) was seen as a leverage point for existing social and environmental agendas with progress reported in specific sectors; for example, the Sustainable Coastal Tourism Plan, believed to be the first in Mexico, includes guidance on beach and mangrove management. Huge scope for mitigation in the hotel sector was recognised with minimal current use of alternative energy, water recycling and waste management. The Small Hotels Association of Playa del Carmen and the Maya Riviera explained that the high proportion of family run hotels in Playa makes the sector responsive to calls for environmentally sustainable practices.
Strategy for future adaptation included reinitiating local food production as a local livelihood resource as well as a means of making some independence from global markets. External knowledge and expertise was accessed by NGOs through supporter networks and commercial links and had been instrumental in successful legal challenges to developments made on environmental grounds including X-Cacel, X-Cacelito and the Ultramar Doc. These were important symbolic successes, demonstrating that enforcing environmental controls need not jeopardise local economic growth.

Civil society groups tended to operate as top-down advocates or satellites to the government–corporate-business policy-making core. One social development leader observed that ‘organisations are closed – they inform only staff and families, there is little public communication about plans or opportunities’. This reflected the lack of trust and individualised nature of Playa’s society, one where, as one respondent put it, there was ‘no culture for donations, public participation or volunteerism’. Perhaps because of a lack of local embeddedness, the personalised character of civil society organisation and its orientation towards government, there were few examples of collaboration across sectors. This is a particular challenge for building capacity for progressive adaptation.