315
of the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Pacific regions, the lack of legal protection
instruments (Protected Natural Areas ratio) further decreases their possibilities to
adapt to the effects of climate change. There are three major new marine reserves in
the Caribbean and in the deep Pacific and its islands. The Northern Pacific and Gulf
of California regions are more prepared because they have legal instruments, protection instruments, or institutions like municipal planning and research institutes
that are responsible for preparing local development plans and adaptation strategies
to the effects of climate change.
Recommendations and Future Perspectives
Climate change effects on coastal areas have been one of the major issues addressed
in scientific journals and media. Sea level rise and erosion have been most mentioned as the major threats. Floods associated with hurricane and resilience related
issues are historical priorities to which economic and human resources have been
assigned, maybe because of the strength and visual impact and the sudden nature of
these events. Nevertheless, other climate changes are equivalently important, even
if their more medium to long term character is perceived only at a longer time scale
(or are unseen). The results of this preliminary study show a country where the
majority of municipalities will have dryer climates in the medium term, combined
with an average low governance. Resilience to dryness associated with climate
changes must be constructed from now on, in order to reach a stable and locally
adaptable governance and to count with tools to face the different present and future
coastal aridity situations characteristic of coastal Mexico.
More detailed analysis of these three components will allow to group municipalities in clusters with similar characteristics in terms of vulnerability to dryness as we
determined it. This will be the first step to assign priorities and to identify the component to be attended (sensitivity or adaptation capacity, for example). The analysis
represented in Fig. 17.7 provides more information like, for example, that desert
categories are those with more adaptation capacities, compared to the more humid
categories that will suffer a greater shift towards aridity (larger circles representing
greater than 10 change in Lang’s index) and that have a maximum of two adaptation
instruments. Plotting a similar graph with sensitivity index values, or running statistical analysis (cluster analysis), might aid us to identify these homogeneous groups
of planning units.
In this chapter, we used indicators and methodologies suggested for regional
scales at the international (Abuodha and Woodroffe 2006, 2010a; McFadden 2007;
Harvey and Woodroffe 2008; McLeod et al. 2010) and national level through a
selection from the list of indicators for each coastal municipalities climate change
vulnerability components proposed by Azuz-Adeath et al. (2010b) for the case of
Mexico. The next step will be to downscale the analysis towards local issues. An
aspect of the complexities of dryland socio-ecological systems is the administrative
unit at which it must be attended; if future exposition data are available at a global
17 Vulnerability to the Effects of Climate Change: Future Aridness and Present…
of the Gulf of Mexico and Southern Pacific regions, the lack of legal protection
instruments (Protected Natural Areas ratio) further decreases their possibilities to
adapt to the effects of climate change. There are three major new marine reserves in
the Caribbean and in the deep Pacific and its islands. The Northern Pacific and Gulf
of California regions are more prepared because they have legal instruments, protection instruments, or institutions like municipal planning and research institutes
that are responsible for preparing local development plans and adaptation strategies
to the effects of climate change.
Recommendations and Future Perspectives
Climate change effects on coastal areas have been one of the major issues addressed
in scientific journals and media. Sea level rise and erosion have been most mentioned as the major threats. Floods associated with hurricane and resilience related
issues are historical priorities to which economic and human resources have been
assigned, maybe because of the strength and visual impact and the sudden nature of
these events. Nevertheless, other climate changes are equivalently important, even
if their more medium to long term character is perceived only at a longer time scale
(or are unseen). The results of this preliminary study show a country where the
majority of municipalities will have dryer climates in the medium term, combined
with an average low governance. Resilience to dryness associated with climate
changes must be constructed from now on, in order to reach a stable and locally
adaptable governance and to count with tools to face the different present and future
coastal aridity situations characteristic of coastal Mexico.
More detailed analysis of these three components will allow to group municipalities in clusters with similar characteristics in terms of vulnerability to dryness as we
determined it. This will be the first step to assign priorities and to identify the component to be attended (sensitivity or adaptation capacity, for example). The analysis
represented in Fig. 17.7 provides more information like, for example, that desert
categories are those with more adaptation capacities, compared to the more humid
categories that will suffer a greater shift towards aridity (larger circles representing
greater than 10 change in Lang’s index) and that have a maximum of two adaptation
instruments. Plotting a similar graph with sensitivity index values, or running statistical analysis (cluster analysis), might aid us to identify these homogeneous groups
of planning units.
In this chapter, we used indicators and methodologies suggested for regional
scales at the international (Abuodha and Woodroffe 2006, 2010a; McFadden 2007;
Harvey and Woodroffe 2008; McLeod et al. 2010) and national level through a
selection from the list of indicators for each coastal municipalities climate change
vulnerability components proposed by Azuz-Adeath et al. (2010b) for the case of
Mexico. The next step will be to downscale the analysis towards local issues. An
aspect of the complexities of dryland socio-ecological systems is the administrative
unit at which it must be attended; if future exposition data are available at a global
17 Vulnerability to the Effects of Climate Change: Future Aridness and Present…