Mexican Yucatan State Coast Report Card
In July 2016, IAN was asked by faculty at the
Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM) to assist with the development of an ecosystem health report card for the Yucatan State coastal zone on the Gulf of Mexico. This region has areas of mangroves and wetlands along the shore that provide nesting and nursery habitat for flamingoes, fish, and sea turtles. These habitats also support coastal fisheries and a tourism economy. However, the beauty and natural resources there have led to an explosion of coastal development. On 4-5 August 2016, Dr. Heath Kelsey and Jane Hawkey from IAN facilitated a preliminary report card workshop at the
National Coastal Resilience Laboratory (LANRESC) in Sisal, Mexico, to begin the ecosystem assessment process. This newsletter, produced in
Spanish and
English, is the result of that workshop.
The first Yucatán Coast Report Card was released in April 2018, the culmination of almost 2 years of work by our colleagues at Laboratorio Nacional de Resiliencia Costera (LANRESC), in Sisal, Yucatán Mexico. This Report Card project was one of the first to use an approach where IAN helped train practitioners on the report card process, largely leaving them to do the work, but providing support as needed from the IAN team through feedback on drafts and graphics, process questions, etc. The Yucatán Coast Report Card is really well done; it's a beautiful document that clearly communicates the relevant issues and results in a simple way, using a good combination of high quality, artistic visual elements.