Public policy instruments coherence analysis to address coastal risk in Yucatan, Mexico

Coastal risk is a condition increased by climate change and oceanic changes. 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 analyzes the coherence of diverse public policies related to coastal risk in three communities in Mexico to demonstrate a challenge of local climate governance to avoid disasters and to develop analytical capabilities on the decision-making processes. The latent content of 15 regulatory and two nonregulatory instruments of the coastal strip of the Yucatan state was analyzed. A deductive-inductive hybrid coding identified six coastal adaptation categories at the municipal level. Polygons were mapped using layers of smaller-scale official cartographic units using QGIS software to analyze the spatial policy coherence and permissiveness. Finally, implementation of internal and external inconsistencies between policies were identified. The results demonstrated that the attention to coastal risk needs to be more integrated and coherent between policy areas, indicating its immaturity and challenges of adaptive local governance. The prohibition and limitation of authorized construction in risk zones are priorities amongst all the instruments, followed by ecosystem restoration. According to interviews, local agents have achieved more effective strategies in addressing their conditions of vulnerability than governmental initiatives. 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 climate change.