Marine Protected Areas in Panama: Grassroots Activism and Advocacy

Abstract

C entral American nation-states have increasingly responded to global environmental agendas. As countries address these agendas, they also emphasize the need to develop legal systems that facilitate environmental protection and create protected areas. However, the role of Central American states in funding and implementing environmental protection has been consistently inadequate (Sundberg 2003). This has produced alternative responses to environmental protection, from the creation of certification programs to assess and audit facilities and products (Honey 2003; McLaren 2003), the development of formal mechanisms that allow landowners to transform their properties into privately owned conservation areas, to the creation of consortiums and trusts to manage these areas. As a consequence, national and international conservation NGOs replace governments in the quest for environmental sustainability. The environmental discourses and practices-as well as the morality accompanying resource use and conservation-privileged by the donor organizations become the environmental truth by which environmental sustainability is planned and designed (Worster 1990; Sundberg 2003). This article contributes to the relatively recent interest in environmental anthropology in discussing collaborations involved in "the production of environmental objects, projects, and political positions" (Tsing 2001:15) as well as the study of social movements centering on environmental and indigenous rights issues (Brosius 2001). The article focuses on the alliances developed among North American conservationist organizations, Panamanian authorities and NGOs, and Ngöbe indigenous peoples to create a master plan for the management of a marine protected area in the Archipelago of Bocas del Toro, Panama. Believing that the government was unable to protect the natural resources of the Archipelago, public, private, grassroots organizations, and indigenous communities united to create the Consejo Consultivo (Consulting Assembly), whose main goal was to develop a more

Tourists perceptions of Caribbean islands facing environmental threats before the COVID-19 health crisis: Holbox Island and Archipelago of Bocas del Toro

“…However, the once abundant lobsters, conchs, sharks, and many commercial fish suffer overexploitation [ 1 , 69 , 70 ]. Anthropogenic actions increased in severity in the ABT as “sun and sand tourism” expanded in the Caribbean and it became a Zone of Tourism Development of National Interest for Panama [ 13 , 71 , 72 ]. The increase of tourists visiting the ABT as well as new residents to the area are drawn in by the economic opportunities of tourism, leading to accelerating growth rates in human population ( Fig 5 ).…”

Testing the water, challenging the narratives of sustainable development: student volunteer research promoting public health in rural Panama in the shadow of an "eco-playground"

“…Through their ability to speak the language of conservation and conform to the image of its narrative, the Ngäbe-Buglé formed successful alliances with national and international supporters, emerging as "cultural intermediaries" while the needs of Afro-Antilleans who challenged the discourse and expressed dissatisfaction with the plan, remained neglected (Guerrón Montero 2005). In a 2014 analysis of the effects of tourism development in Bocas, Guerrón Montero (2014) again focuses on perception, arguing that since 1989 governments of "post-invasion Panama" have participated in a "myth-making project" that presents the country as a safe, demilitarized, police-free state.…”

On Tourism and the Constructions of ‘Paradise Islands’ in Central America and the Caribbean

“…Colón Island has become increasingly popular as an eco‐tourism destination since the early 1990s. The government promotes it as a ‘pristine’ environment, calling it ‘the Galápagos of the 21st century’ and more recently, ‘the Venice of the Caribbean’ (Guerrón Montero, 2005, 2006b). It has approximately 18,000 inhabitants distributed on nine islands.…”

“…Subsistence agriculture, fishing and turtle hunting were the order of the day until an accelerated growth of tourism in the 1990s. Since then, the archipelago has become a popular place for ‘eco‐vacations' (Guerrón Montero, 2005, 2006b).…”

“…Both Colón Island and Carriacou are dependent territories of states that have historically neglected them, and thus share a history of relative isolation and remoteness. Until the advent of tourism in the 1990s, Colón Island was perceived as a wilderness or a ‘punishment zone’ for ill‐behaved bureaucrats (Guerrón Montero, 2005). Similarly, neglect and abandonment have characterised the history of Carriacou:…”