InteractIve governance for marIne conservatIon: an IllustratIon

Governance is increasingly mentioned in policy documents as a means of addressing coastal and ocean issues, including those related to fisheries. several conceptual and theoretical governance models have been developed to help advance the discourse. among them is the governance, a perspective that focuses on understanding the characteristics of the natural and social systems that are being governed, the governing systems, and their interactions. It posits that conservation concerns and challenges in fisheries and coastal zones lie in all these aspects, and the overall quality of governance can be improved with such understanding. Here I define interactive governance and illustrate the utility of this perspective in examining features of aquatic, social, ecological, and political systems that may foster or limit overall governance quality. to do so, I present the example of a marine conservation effort in san felipe, Yucatan, Mexico.