Design and evaluation of marine and coastal governance indicators for the Southern Mexican region

• Autor(a) principal: Azuz-Adeath,Isaac
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Outros Autores: García-Gutiérrez,César, Alonso-Peinado,Humberto, Torres-Navarrete,Carlos, Díaz-Mondragón,Salomón
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1646-88722015000300004
• topic: Governance Indicators; Coastal; Marine; Planning Process; Mexico

This paper presents a set of coastal and marine governance indicators for the southern Mexican coast; this set of indicators was developed as a part of the database, information and knowledge provision for the Regional and Marine Planning Process for six -southern and central- Pacific coastal states (RMPP-SCP). The theoretical framework and methodological approach followed the concepts developed by the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC-UNESCO). The following three different spatial/administrative scales were used: regional, state and county levels. This paper mainly examined the county-level results. A total of forty-six indicators were created, evaluated and used to define four compound indexes related with the institutional, policy and legal arrangements; the adequacy of the management process; the information, knowledge and participation level and the mainstreaming of the planning proposals, finally, aggregating these four indexes one general governance index for the region was proposed. We explored the internal consistency of the indicators by running several uncertainty analyses that entailed evaluating the effect of the aggregation method, the weighted scheme and the exclusion of individual indicators in the overall performance of the study region and its four dimensions (goals). The general governance index shows only 9% (5/53) of the total counties with a regular/medium governance level and 91% (48/53) with poor/bad governance level. An interesting and expected finding was the observation of a significant correlation between the general governance index and the governmental poverty level index. Using the governance results, the paper proposes several paths to implement the RMPP-SCP actions at county or state level; identifies the key elements (i.e. indicators, objectives, goals) to work on them in order to have more chances of success in implementing the program, and the critical variables (related to governance) that need to be improved to maintain or improve the environmental quality of the region. The set of governance indicators could be applied to other regions in the country for promoting integrated coastal and marine planning and management, but also could provide practical benefits for the development of municipalities and states when using them as benchmarking strategies.