Participative governance quality over marine spaces: challenges for estuarine socioecological resilience at the Paranaguá Bay Zone

ABSTRACT

Promoting inclusive and effective governance in regional estuaries offers an encompassing challenge within the scope of Policy analysis and its interactions within socioecological research. The integrated approach for both theoretical elements has not easily been improved, despite the increase in analytical frameworks in this theme. The Paranaguá Bay Zone (PBZ) in the state of Paraná, Brazil, is composed of a few cities, several large, protected areas, and traditional communities. On the one hand, the intensification of real estate pressures in a low demographic region is creating a wave of value conversion regarding the trends of the coastal gentrification phenomenon, notwithstanding the lower degree of intensity when compared to other Brazilian estuaries. On the other hand, it shows a lack of political representation and institutional action at the subnational level. This asymmetrical process is strongly related to historical land development and the controversial process of implementing protected areas and zoning tools. Promoting the economic rise of the territory has affected traditional communities and conservation management, requiring permanent improvement in the ability for community mobilization and juridical vigilance in the face of impacts related to such pressure. In the meantime, scholars have considered knowledge building, which brings up assessment issues on how the decision-making process has been operated and what gaps and asymmetries can be revealed for further resilience analyses. This study is an effort to approach the performance of participative governance of the estuary and is restricted to a preliminary assessment of the participative management committees designed by legislation under area-based attributions. This study is not aimed at exploring the belief systems of different social groups/stakeholders. Results have a great emphasis on methodological building and testing, which revealed the importance of imposing an inventory and hierarchy model on the multiple committees of governance and their sectorization across adjacent areas. Results also underline variables of interest and pilot indicators in the subject under analysis. Preliminary results point to the need for overcoming methodological challenges, and findings that are useful as first evidence in the comprehension of the low performance by different committees, which often operate without any regular, systematic, integrated, transparent, legitimate, and permanent agenda of Policy activities for the PBZ fisheries territory. Qualitative data and institutional memoirs should be available and categorized in government programs, whereas research efforts that look to better recognize the idiosyncrasies of community realities under the pressures of non-transparent economic drivers are much needed.

Keywords:
Resilience; Inclusive Governance; Conceptual framework; Marine space, Dataless