Local Climate Governance, the Challenge of Addressing Coastal Risk in Communities of Yucatan

Abstract

Coastal risk is a condition increased by the effect of climate change (CC). Its governance involves diverse areas of public policy and government levels that in the best case scenario would act in a coordinated manner and with a focus that favors local government leadership. This manuscript presents an analysis of the coherence of diverse public policies related to coastal risk in three communities in Mexico to demonstrate a challenge of the local climate governance. The latent content of 15 regulatory and two non regulatory instruments of the coastal strip of the state of Yucatan were analyzed, and through a deductive-inductive hybrid coding, six coastal adaptation regulation categories were identified at the municipal level. To analyze the spatial coherence, polygons were mapped using layers of smaller-scale official cartographic units using QGIS software and the level of overlap was classified into two categories: in agreement or contradiction with each other. Finally, implementation of internal and external inconsistencies between policies were identified. The results demonstrated that the attention to coastal risk lacks integration and coherence between policy areas; a condition that indicates its immaturity and challenges of adaptive local governance. Measures to control the alteration of sand banks and mangrove ecosystem are emphasized; while avoiding construction in risk areas does not stand out as relevant. The vision maintained in the face of the problem implies adaptation actions in the short term that in the long run will increase the vulnerability of the systems and/or affect their capacity to adapt to CC.

Keywords: Policy coherence, local governance, Climate Change, Mexico