Crafting grassroots’ socio-environmental governance for a coastal biosphere rural community in Campeche, Mexico

Campeche, Mexico's, northern coastal zone constitutes part of a National Biosphere Reserve known as Los Petenes. Small rural communities skirt this saltwater marsh wetlands protected area. Flanking Los Petenes' eastern edge, the Mayan village Tankuche's economy revolves around small plot slash-and-burn agriculture and seasonal work at local fisheries located 30 km to the west. As a particular freshwater springs peten within a saltwater marshland niche, El Remate, sustains Tankuche's people, and acts as a sacred space and recreational hub to an ever increasing local and regional tourism, particularly during holidays. The social-environmental-system (SES) abusive relationship between El Remate and Tankuche has strained equilibrium thresholds for the past thirty years. In 2010 Campeche's state government intervened with a participatory action research program to build basic infrastructure and restore El Remate's environment. This governmental mediation process triggered a transformative environmental governance practice that placed local decision-making procedures at the forefront to create a uniquely innovative management scenario rarely documented in developing countries. This article illustrates the entire process using a key multi-leveled, multi-scaled administrative model. The authors project roles involved building local community management skills while conserving social wellbeing and environmental health. We discuss some minor obstacles while creating this singular transformative governance prototype and analyze process results to foster local and greater regional implications. Transformative environmental governance programs positively address underlying challenges, while at the same time fully recognizing vulnerability conditions' viable thresholds that coalesce to promote more complete social participation and local empowerment, while, at the same time building organizational aptitudes and competence in EGA associations that generate developmental retro-alimentation processes.