Reef-to-Ridge Sustainability.
Research Field Site: Placencia Peninsula, Belize.
Potential Research Questions: (a) How can sustainability of local livelihoods and coastal ecosystems be maintained in the process of intensifying industrial food production (banana and shrimp farms) and large scale tourism development (mass cruise ship tourism and large resorts) in a coastal area, while also protecting coral reef ecosystem health? (b) What are organizational constraints and opportunities to protect social and environmental sustainability in a reef-to-ridge ecosystem?
Background: Belize is highly culturally diverse with more than 6 ethnic groups and multiple languages spoken in a small geographic area, and has the largest portion of the 1,000 km2 Mesoamerican Barrier Reef (Nuenninghoff 2015). Its reefs contribute about 30% of the GDP through fisheries, eco-tourism, and cruise tourism (Cho 2005). Placencia Peninsula has one of the highest average population growth rates in Belize. Around Placencia sociocultural and political realities are also shaped by intensifying large-scale foreign export markets that drive banana cultivation and shrimp farming (Karlsson and Bryceson 2016; Medina 2010; Moberg 1996, 1997, 2003). A proposed centralized wastewater treatment system spurred an interdisciplinary team of USF researchers to investigate the community’s perceptions of and feasibility to adopt other wastewater technologies that incorporate resource recovery, as well as to document sociocultural impacts of coastal environmental degradation from intensifying tourism development (Wells et al. 2016). Local NGOs are exploring ways to co-locate their activities and combine with sea based food production of crabs, lobsters, and conch, however, nutrients from land-based anthropogenic activities can have a negative effect on coral (Bruno et al. 2003; D’Angelo and Wiedenmann 2014; Rasher et al. 2012; Bell et al. 2014).
References
Bell, P.R., Elmetri, I., Lapointe, B.E. (2013). Evidence of large-scale chronic eutrophication in the Great Barrier Reef: quantification of chlorophyll a thresholds for sustaining coral reef communities, Ambio, 43(3), 361-376.
Bruno, J., Petes, L.E., Harvell, D., Hettinger, A. (2003). Nutrient enrichment can increase the severity of coral diseases. Ecology Letters, 6, 1056-1061.
Cho, L. (2005). Marine protected areas: a tool for integrated coastal management in Belize. Ocean & Coastal Management 48(11), 932-947.
D’Angelo, C., Wiedenmann, J. (2014). Impacts of nutrient enrichment on coral reefs: new perspectives and implications for coastal management and reef survival. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 7, 82–93.
Karlsson, M., Bryceson, I. (2016). Continuity and change: understanding livelihood shifts and adaptation in coastal Belize 1830–2012. Local Environment, 21(2), 137–156.
Medina, L.K. (2010). When government targets “The State”: transnational NGO government and the state in Belize. PoLAR: Political and Legal Anthropology Review, 33(2), 245–263.
Moberg, M. (1996). Myths that divide: immigrant labor and class segmentation in the Belizean banana industry. American Ethnologist, 23(2), 311-330.
Moberg, M. (1997). Myths of ethnicity and nation: immigration, work, and identity in the Belize banana industry. Univ. of Tennessee Press, Knoxville.
Moberg, M. (2003). Banana wars: Power, production, and history in the Americas. Duke University Press.
Nuenninghoff, S., Lemay, M., Rogers, C., Martin. D. (2015). Sustainable Tourism in Belize. Inter- American Development Bank. Environment, Rural Development, and Disaster Risk Management Division. Infrastructure and Environment Sector. Technical Note No. IDB-TN-737. Available for download here.
Rasher, D.B., Engel, S., Bonito, V., Fraser, G.J., Montoya, J.P., Hay, M.E. (2012). Effects of herbivory, nutrients, and reef protection on algal proliferation and coral growth on a tropical reef. Oecologia, 169, 187–198.
Wells, E.C., Zarger, R.K, Whiteford, L.M, Mihelcic, J.R., Koenig, E.S., Cairns, M.R. (2016). The impacts of tourism development on perceptions and practices of sustainable wastewater management on the Placencia Peninsula. Belize. Journal of Cleaner Production, 111(B), 430- 411.
