Multiple resource use strategies confer resilience to the socio-ecosystem in a protected area in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico

Abstract

2Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) are the main biodiversity conservation strategy in Mexico. 3 Generally, NPAs are established on the territories of indigenous and rural groups driving 4 important changes in their local resource management practices. In this paper we study the 5 case of Otoch Ma'ax Yetel Kooh, an NPA in the Yucatan Peninsula, Mexico, that has been 6 studied in a multidisciplinary way for more than twenty years. This reserve and its buffer zone 7 is homeland to Yucatec Mayan communities that until recently used to manage their resources 8 following a multiple use strategy (MUS), which involves local agricultural practices and has been 9 proposed as resilience-enhancing mechanism. However, due to the restrictions imposed by the 10 decree of the reserve and the growth of tourism in the region, some of these communities have 11 started to abandon the MUS and specialize on tourism-related activities. We build a dynamical 12 computational model to explore the effects of some of these changes on the capacity of this NPA 13 to conserve the biodiversity and on the resilience of households to some frequent disturbances in 14 the region. The model, through the incorporation of agent-based and boolean network modelling, 15 explores the interaction between the forest, the monkey population and some productive activities 16 done by the households (milpa agriculture, ecotourism, agriculture, charcoal production). We 17 calibrated the model, explored its sensibility, compared it with empirical data and simulated 18 different management scenarios. Our results suggest that those management strategies that 19 1 do not exclude traditional activities may be compatible with conservation objectives, supporting 20 previous studies. Also, our results support the hypothesis that the MUS, throughout a balanced 21 integration of traditional and alternative activities, is a mechanism to enhance household resilience 22 in terms of income and food availability, as it reduces variability and increases the resistance to 23 some disturbances. Our study, in addition to highlighting the importance of local management 24 practices for resilience, also illustrates how computational modeling and systems perspective are 25 effective means of integrating and synthesizing information from different sources. 26 27 agent-based model, boolean network, resilience 28 1 INTRODUCTION Natural Protected Areas (NPAs) are one of the main conservation strategies in the world to face 29 biodiversity loss. In 2016, 14.7% of terrestrial and inland water ecosystems worldwide were under this 30 type of protection (UNEP -WCMC and IUCN, 2016). This strategy, however, has been highly controversial 31 for their impact on the rural communities that inhabit the protected territories, namely, on their forms of 32 resource management and appropriation (Durand and Jímenez, 2010; García-Frapolli, 2015). Nowadays, 33 conservation strategies in NPAs range from total exclusion of human activities, to the promotion of the 34 sustainable use of the territory (Br...