Community Perspectives Toward a Marine Reserve: A Case Study of San Felipe,Yucatán,México

San Felipe marine reserve, in Yucatán, México, is unique, and particularly suited for a case study because the local community created it without a mandate from higher levels of government. This article presents the results of a survey of local interest groups using the method of paired comparisons and rank correlation analysis, to reveal local judgments about the severity of damages to coastal habitats and the level of impacts of activities that cause the damages. The results show that fishers differ significantly from other interest groups in their rankings of the severity of damages to habitats and of impacting activities. These findings suggest that despite the overlapping interests in protecting the resources and the critical habitats, the different perspectives of local interest groups about the severity of damages must be considered in the management of San Felipe marine reserve.     

Preface and Acknowledgments

Abstract

The term “mitigation”; has been used in connection with habitat losses attributable to federal water projects as early as the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1899 and the Fish and Wildlife Coordination Act of 1934. Most of the current requirements to mitigate habitat losses associated with water development projects apply to wetlands, as they are biologically productive and have been destroyed at an increasing rate during recent years by developers seeking prime land in the coastal zone. A case study of the Port of Coos Bay and the City of North Bend, Oregon, provides an actual experience of estuarine mitigation in a dredging project and an airport fill. The case was developed as part of a larger curriculum research study for seaport management. This article is primarily written as a case with a brief introduction and discussion of mitigation requirements, followed by the text of the case and ending with a series of hypotheses for further research.     

A Step Zero Analysis of the Galapagos Marine Reserve

Contrary to common perceptions, the creation of protected areas does not start when they are officially declared but generally follows a long process. For instance, the Galapagos Marine Reserve (GMR) was not “born” when it was formally announced on March 18^th 1998, but several decades before that. Through document analysis and key informant interviews, we applied the “step zero” approach to examine what happened prior to the implementation of the GMR. This study reveals that the GMR did not arise from a social and political vacuum; rather, events took place in the distant past, even centuries ago, influenced the reserve's creation and current status. Its establishment was driven by complex geopolitical, economic, social, and environmental factors from both within and outside Galapagos. Additionally, the process of creating the GMR was convoluted, marked by hidden interests and conflictive political agendas that triggered controversies between users. The making of the GMR was also influenced by the interest in promoting “nature-based” tourism, and the regulations that followed had disadvantaged small-scale fishers. This knowledge about the reserve's pre-implementation phase enables a broader understanding of the current challenges facing the performance of the GMR and points to possible governance interventions needed to enhance its sustainability.     

Coastal Management Using Public Judgments,Importance Scales,and Predetermined Schedule

A predetermined schedule of sanctions and regulations that reflect both scientific knowledge of resources and the preference and judgments of resource users in the community may provide a useful guide for management decisions involving complex coastal resource systems. Such a schedule can be implemented by constructing scales reflecting public judgments of the relative importance of adverse impacts on resources, or of activities causing such impacts. The importance scales can then be used to assess existing regulations and current management priorities and to serve as a guide for revisions and changes to current practice, for the design of new policy, for rationalizing regulatory controls, and for determining damage awards and other deterrence sanctions. The resulting evolution of a schedule can improve the consistency of resource use with community preferences by, for example, prescribing more severe restrictions on what are widely agreed to be more serious harms and lesser controls on less important ones. The application of this approach is demonstrated using Ban Don Bay, Thailand.