Adaptive governance of recreational ecosystem services following a major hurricane

Despite the popularity of coastal recreational ecosystem services, and their linked synergies and tradeoffs with regulating and provisioning ecosystem services, there is uncertainty over integration into decision-making. There are few empirical analyses of decision-making, and “governance is largely ignored” (Primmer et al., 2015, pg. 158). This case study details decision-making following a major coastal hazard, Hurricane Harvey in the Gulf of Mexico, in the United States (U.S.). It illustrates how collaborative adaptive governance of recreational ecosystem services enhances coastal resilience, or the ability to recover after a hazard. Evidence of resilience centered policy is surprising in the U.S. state of Texas, a conservative subnational area where the denial of climate change science is popular in the epicenter of the U.S. oil and gas industry. This research suggests the devastating hurricane and the popularity of recreational ecosystem services provided a window of opportunity for policy makers to address resilience, which would have been otherwise impossible for political reasons. As part of this process, decision-makers and stakeholders 1) sought out new and innovative funding sources for rapid recreational infrastructure repairs focused on resilience, 2) prevented the loss of public waterfronts and small businesses in the nature based recreational economy that constitute major parts of local identity, and 3) enhanced decision maker capacity to include local ecological knowledge in novel and potentially transformative ways. Recreational ecosystem services, due to their obvious economic importance and popularity, may act as unifying symbols to decision-makers, allowing them enact policy to respond to climate impacts and to conserve ecosystem services in places where this is otherwise politically unpopular.