Marine resource dependence in rural coastal communities south of the Reef Corridor of the Southwest Gulf of Mexico

Highlights

• Understanding marine resource dependence is fundamental to develop management strategies tailored for local users.

• •Allotment ownership, economic burden and fishing labor relevance increased dependence to marine resources.

• •Social capital can reduce the impacts that management strategies have on the livelihoods of local communities.

• •Diversified livelihoods of marine resource users can serve to create strategies that promote conservation and wellbeing.

• •Poorly planned management strategies introduce significant food security risks even at a low to moderate levels of marine based food dependence.

Abstract

Coastal fishing communities rely on goods and services provided by marine ecosystems to satisfy their social and economic needs; however, continued exploitation of these ecosystems has degraded and threatened them making it imperative to implement conservation and management strategies. Management strategy impacts on local communities lifestyle is a function of dependence on the resource targeted by these strategies. The sustainable livelihoods approach can be used to measure resource dependence. Using this approach we designed an index to explore marine resource dependence of communities linked to the Los Tuxtlas reef system located in the south of the state of Veracruz. Thirty-eight surveys were applied across three communities. Our results suggest the communities we surveyed are moderately dependent on marine resources. Of the variables we measured, allotment ownership, subsidies, formal social capital, work independence, economic burden and fishing labor relevance contributed the most to marine resource dependence; while informal social capital helped reduce it. Understanding how resource dependence is formed in rural communities is fundamental to develop management and conservation strategies that achieve resource conservation goals and meet community needs.

Introduction

Continued exploitation of marine and coastal goods and services to satisfy human needs (de Groot et al., 2012) has degraded and threatened their stability (Barragán, 2014). The current situation of coastal and marine resources makes it imperative to design management strategies to protect them worldwide (IUCN, 2014). Marine protected areas (MPAs) are the most widely strategy used to achieve protection goals (Christie and White, 2007) probably due to their win-win discourse on conservation and development (Chaigneau and Brown, 2016).

Coastal Management strategies are fundamentally a series of rules and agreements aimed to regulate human behavior to protect marine ecosystems, habitats or species (Jentoft et al., 2007). Some rules and agreements are expressed as “non-use” areas surrounded by buffer zones where extractive and non-extractive uses of resources are regulated (Christie and White, 2007).

It is currently recognized that failing to consider communities livelihoods (Bennett and Dearden, 2014) and their resource uses (Levine et al., 2015) threatens the success of management strategies (Rossiter and Levine, 2014) both socially and biologically (Christie, 2004). Even if conservation goals are achieved, communities’ livelihoods may be greatly affected if their participation is omitted from the management process. (Maldonado & Moreno-Sánchez, 2014a) since such management strategies are likely to precipitate additional socioeconomic pressures on resource users (Chen et al., 2014; Marshall et al., 2010; Tuler et al., 2008).

The level of impact management strategies has on local communities’ lifestyle is a function of their level of dependence on the resource being managed (e.g. ecosystems, habitats or species) (Force et al., 1993; Jacob et al., 2001; Marshall, 2011; Tidball and Stedman, 2013). In other words, how important the resources targeted by the management strategy are for the activities that local users carry out to satisfy their economic and social needs, whether at community, household or personal scale.

Management strategies harmonizing the needs of local populations with the reduction of human impacts on natural ecosystems can be developed if the level and characteristic of the communities’ natural resources dependence are known (Jacob et al., 2013; Salas et al., 2015). This type of management strategy can be achieved with the inclusion of programs aimed at reducing resource dependence which in turns reduces management strategies negative impacts on communities (Charles and Wilson, 2008).

In order to understand resource dependence and incorporate it into management strategies, it first has to be measured. One way to do it is using the sustainable livelihood framework (SLF) (Maldonado and Moreno-Sánchez, 2014a, Maldonado and Moreno-Sánchez, 2014b). In this framework a person's, household's or community's ability to cope with resource changes is a function of their economic activities, capabilities, assets, claims and access, which are grouped into capitals (Chambers and Conway, 1991a; Scoones, 2000). The ability to deal with resource shifts is higher, the more varied are the components in each capital (Chambers and Conway, 1991a; Scoones, 2000), and therefore dependence on a particular resource is lower.

Livelihood capitals and their components together with natural resources can be thought as a gear system: if one gear is removed we can observe what gears allow the system to keep going and what gears start to fail. Therefore in terms of the SLF, some capitals or components increase dependence on a resource while others reduce it (Fig. 2).

Using this approach we explored the natural resource dependence of communities linked to the Los Tuxtlas reef system (LTRS) located south of the Reef Corridor of the Southwest Gulf of Mexico (Ortiz-Lozano et al., 2013). We choose LTRS to explore resource dependence because it has been used by these communities for decades as a means of obtaining income and food. In 2018 The Mexican Natural Protected Areas Commission (CONANP) proposed LTRS as a natural protected area (NPA), but as of writing this paper there hasn't been an official resolution. Despite climate change having the potential to alter communities' livelihoods greatly, we chosen no to include it since it is a dynamic process; and our method generates a diagnosis of the current resource dependence.

The objectives of the NPA are to preserve, protect and restore the coastal system of the Los Tuxtlas region. To achieve these goals the proposed management strategies consist of creating four core zones where fishing is banned, the rest of the area as a buffer zone where fishing will be limited. It is also worth mentioning that an entry fee will be implemented for visitors and tour operators. (CONANP, 2018). We didn't found any reference to resource user's livelihoods, nor how the proposed management strategies could impact them, in the supporting study required for the implementation of the proposed NPA.