Adaptation to Climate Change: From Resilience to Transformation (28 page)

Individual acts had successfully challenged dominant cultural and social norms; for example, through the provision of civic amenities including the Ceiba Park to show local residents that they too, and not only tourists or the locally wealthy, were worthy of a healthy local environment. Speaking up in public consultations was claimed to have symbolic as well as instrumental significance through demonstrating the exercising of a local voice. The facilitating of neighbourhood talking groups aimed to strengthen families. Still many residents did not see themselves as citizens of Playa but of their home towns and states, making the building of any grassroots-led call for change very challenging. Greater capacity for adaptation, albeit of a resilient kind, was observed with civil society groups operating close to the private sector: innovation included dive companies that opened inland cave-diving sites in response to deteriorating coastal environments. The importance of local and global ecosystem services to the local tourist economy also provided a narrative for current development planning and regulation and one that could be adapted to include climate-proofing.

Tulum was until the 1970s a Mayan ejido of subsistence farmers. The ejido’s settlement was established about 2km inland, and thus protected from hurricanes by a generous stretch of mangroves and forest. Driven by in-migration, Tulum’s population grew exponentially following the construction of a highway and in the 1980s, as low density hotels proliferated along its outlying beach front. By 2004 there were 53 hotels in Tulum offering 1,235 rooms and a permanent population of around 1,000. Hotel designs range from concrete three-storey buildings to very basic thatched cabins, and often include renewable energy and other
eco-friendly features. Although some of the hotels are owned by external actors (Mexican and foreign entrepreneurs), the majority are owned and managed by local or partly local entrepreneurs. As in Playa, ejidatarios benefited from selling land and some of them are now wealthy even if still preserving some of their traditional ways of life. In April 2008 the state government granted the independence of Tulum as a new municipality.

Today, Tulum is at a crossroads with two competing development narratives. The dominant narrative portrays Tulum as an opportunity for speculative development. This is symbolised by the ‘Downtown Tulum’ development, a project forged and implemented by Yucatecan entrepreneurs in concomitance with the governor of the state. The works for the first phase started in January 2008 and contemplate the urbanisation of 77 hectares located between the town and the beach. The second phase comprises 450 hectares including a mega golf course that would extend up to the beach and a grid of water channels resembling an inland marina.

An alternative narrative is oriented more towards local Mayan values and ecological and community sustainability. This vision was championed by a small group of well-educated local businesses leaders and civil society groups, but optimism for the future of Tulum as a sustainable tourism centre is limited. Respondents presented striking visions for an alternative development, but felt in reality small gains that can build resiliency into development are all that is likely to be achieved in resisting the corporate transformation of Tulum.

We already have failed models such as Acapulco and Cancun and we do not want to fall into the same in Tulum. It is almost impossible for local people to affect the model or direction of development. However, there are local pressures to, for instance, make wider sidewalks or guarantee the connection of drainage to a waste water treatment. We want that they build drainage before paving any street. (Former president, Tulum Hotel Association)

Alternative economic vision is provided by community (ejido) owned development at the Dos Ojos cave system and at a bio-region project at Jacinto Pat Ejido. Most ejido lands and individual owners have sold to speculative capital and subsequently left Tulum but these examples show an economic rationale for development led by and for the benefit of local people with a concern for environmental integrity. Some medium-scale migrant entrepreneurs support this vision, with the Chan Chay Ecological Shop providing green cleaning products for the hotel sector but also organsing workshops, and a Green Expo in Tulum to promote this site as a ‘green spot on the Maya Riviera’.

Local consequences of climate change are recognised, most significantly associated with increased hurricane activity and higher temperatures, both exacerbated locally by deforestation of mangroves and coastal forest and intensive urbanisation.

Climate change is impacting through housing development. The areas that were for conservation are now being urbanized and this is generating
disequilibrium. There have been protests against the Aldea Zama project and now we have an environmental department in the Municipal Council, but this type of progress is screwing us up. (Manager, Zero Workshop Foundation)

Tourist occupation as well as local quality of life is reported to be affected directly, with concerns on a shift from high- to low-end tourists at periods of hurricane activity, and indirectly; for example, through the loss of a section of coast road with every passing hurricane. For other civil actors climate change presented an opportunity to press dominant development processes and lobby for change. For the Centro Ecológico Akumal ‘climate change can slow down development due to the recurrence of hurricanes. This would give us a chance to shift the dynamics’. Similarly, the Chan Chay Ecological Shop saw climate change and its media coverage as contributing to ongoing efforts to motivate individuals and businesses to become more ecologically responsible. For most civil society actors capacity to respond was limited to raising awareness through public workshops and school visits. Coastal reef management has generated some local research and conservation work receives international coverage but is not framed by climate change adaptation.

Social leaders identified considerable barriers to organising for adaptation and change. There was no culture of active resistance in Tulum, but rather one of silence and compliance; at the same time new migrants were less concerned about Tulum’s environment than economic opportunities and so supported the dominant vision of development. For the local and migrant populations compliance was underwritten by a lack of educational opportunities, with TV being the primary source of information and opinion forming. Several respondents saw the promotion of an alternative development not as a challenge of providing information but of working with partners to raise critical consciousness – a deep shift in local mindsets that are accustomed to mediating development through adaptive ingenuity, to use Freire’s terminology; an ambitious aim and one made more so by the weaknesses of the civil sector in Tulum, which was acknowledged to be small with isolated organisations easily coopted by dominant business interests. Middle classes and young professionals that might be at the forefront of organising local social movements were overworked and had little time for public work. The crisis in leadership was such that some respondents looked hopefully to international NGOs.

While undermining local visions for development, the urbanisation process itself also offered opportunities for organising alternatives. Development increased the external visibility of Tulum, and provided opportunities for accessing information; for example, through technical support from the federal agency SEDESOL and the French Embassy, which offered knowledge exchanges with French Municipalities. Drafting of the Urban Development Plan included citizen consultation but with limited impact, with the most positive consequence of this experiment in participatory governance being its slowing down development – providing time for alternative discourses to assert themselves outside of the formal planning process. The new municipal authority expressed concern about the loss of Tulum’s existing cultural and ecological character in the tidal wave of approaching development, but looked to the federal government for leadership and capacity.

Mahahual is a pioneer settlement with a population of about 500, largely in-migrants from Mexico and internationally. From 2008 Mahahual was conferred the status of Alcaldía and administered through a local council with responsibility for the tourism centre with its beach properties, modern residential properties, cruise ship terminal and several small satellite residential and farming communities, including an informal settlement located two kilometres away from the main centre. As the economic base shifted from fishing to tourism rapid in-migration and land speculation have changed the physical and social structure of the town. Few original families remain and these are a small minority compared to the immigrant population. The local economy has experienced a boom since the construction of the cruise ship terminal, with land speculation driving a healthy virtual economy. Hurricane Dean made a direct hit on Mahuhual in August 2007, with the subsequent closure of the cruise ship terminal stalling the local economy.

As a pioneer settlement there was a feeling of excitement and opportunity directed by a desire to build Mahahual without being dominated by cruise tourism. It was an ‘open frontier’ where local residents had a central stake in shaping the future. Here, the need to build community was a common aspiration with some working towards this, but mistrust in social organisation and leadership was pervasive, in business, social and local government organisation alike. Environmental concerns were marginal; for residents development meant the improvement of critical physical and social infrastructure and promotion of the local economy. However, one leader of a social development group suggested that following Hurricane Dean a slow process of cultural change may have begun: ‘after Dean one is starting to feel more solidarity. It is happening as in Cozumel, people there are building solidarity as a result in part of facing many hurricanes’.

The common construction of climate change in terms of hurricane risk played down long-term thinking. Accepting hurricane risk as a development externality also contributed to individual businesses and the regional and federal state being cast as the actors with primary responsibility for responding to climate change. The local council, which should be a driving force for adaptation, had not yet taken this role. Practical action was limited to associated environmental agendas; for example, the Tourism Entrepreneurs Association of Costa Maya campaigned to clean the village with the participation of the authorities, and lobbied to prevent trucks coming into the village and for investment in waste recycling. Information networks were extensive stretching to other parts of the state, Mexico and overseas, and led, for example, to calls for a local civil protection body in local government.

Before Hurricane Dean, low levels of trust with any form of social organisation was aggravated by Mahajual’s diverse and atomised society, with many immigrants and a small population base that constrained the leap from individual to collective action. The leader of a fishing cooperative reflected on the impact of low trust on the formation of his group: ‘We had to make three meetings before we could elect a president. People tend to attack those who stand out from the rest. They think one is looking for his own benefit.’ The combination of economic and governance constraints was exemplified well by the residents of Km55, a satellite settlement with formal and informal land holdings where one leader reported that ‘only 36 of 400 plots are occupied, the rest are held speculatively; this makes it hard to organise’. Another noted that ‘uncertainty about land titling is delaying; for example, people will not put electricity in their lots until this is solved’.

After Hurricane Dean, reconstruction opened a window for building common identity (as temporary labour migrants and uncommitted investors left) and potential for collective action. A businessman reported that:

Before Dean I tried many times to create an association, but without Dean and all this easy money nobody paid much attention. All the ideas that I was proposing turned out to be right after Dean. Now people are starting to build common culture because the ones who have stayed do not see this place only in terms of money.

Some individuals also took advantage of governance failures post-Dean with examples of mangroves being illegally cleared, but for those seeing potential in collective action reconstruction served as a common context for organising. A sense that local civil society actors had a stake in shaping the future of Mahahual was reinforced by a search for alternative tourist markets following the temporary closure of the cruise terminal. This was driven by individual companies with minimal state support. Still many respondents felt that Mahahual’s recent Alcaldía status would also open new opportunities for collaboration with local government and the Alcadía was also concerned to project itself as seeking to build partnerships with local civil society, providing real scope for mainstreaming climate change.

The preceding analysis presented dominant and alternative discourses on development, climate change and scope for adaptation in each study site from the viewpoint of local civil society actors. Here a comparative analysis is presented to draw out differences in the ways in which adaptation was used to promote resilience, transition or transformation within the particular development contexts of each site.
Table 7.1
summarises this analysis. As a caveat, it is important to note the methodological challenges in capturing and then representing the diversity of views on development and climate change in a reductive but

Table 7.1
Adaptation as an opportunity and narrative for development discourse and action