Coastal management in Mexico: Improvements after the marine and coastal policy publication Juan Carlos Nava Fuentes a, * , Pedro Arenas Granados b , Filomena Cardoso Martins c a University of Cadiz, Polígono Río San Pedro,11510, Puerto Real, Cadiz, Spain b Coastal Areas Integrated Management Group, Andalusian Center of Marine Studies, Avenida República Saharaui s/n.,11510, Puerto Real, Cadiz, Spain c Department of Environment and Planning, University of Aveiro, University Campus of Santiago, 3810-193, Aveiro, Portugal article info Article history: Received 9 July 2016 Received in revised form 17 November 2016 Accepted 20 December 2016 Keywords: National policy Coastal management Decalogue abstract Despite the extent of the coastal line and the important heritage of Mexico, it was not until 2006 that the "National Environmental Policy for the Sustainable Development of Oceans and Coasts of Mexico” (NPOCM) was presented, and a formal revisionwas approved in 2011. After three years of its approval, it is convenient to identify the coastal problematic advancement and the progress of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) to address them. A combination of three methodologies was used: (i) the “Global Environmental Outlook” methodology to identify driving forces and pressures, and to establish the coastal environmental state and the impacts in coastal populations; (ii) an exploratory survey to experts in coastal management was distributed by e-mail among the members of the "Mexican Network of Coastal-Marine Management" as well as key people and NGOs members; and (iii) the Decalogue methodology to analyze the government responses as the key issues in the State Public Administration. Far from being included and incorporated into the political agenda, the ICZM is still in an early stage of execution. The main problems identified are the lack of political will; poor cooperation between different government institutions; absence of monitoring programs; and the lack of allocation of financial re- sources in ICZM. © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Mexico has a privileged geographical location positioned stra- tegically between the two largest oceans of the planet. The country has an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of 3.149.920 km 2 including the Territorial Sea (231.813 km 2 ) which is larger than its continental area (1,959,248 km 2 ); and a coastal line extension of 11.220 km which gives a Littorality index 1 of 2.23, considered as a medium value. The country is placed in the 5th place amongst the countries, in the American continent, with a bigger EEZ extension and the 19th Latin-American country because of its Littorality index (SEMARNAT, 2012a; Barragan, 2012). The vast extension of its coastal heritage in addition with the ecosystem diversity has led that this space be of a great importance for the coastal populations and for the economic development of the country. However, the indiscriminate increase of economic activities on the coast, combined with the lack of a coastal policy, discretion in the application of current regulations and the lack of institutional capacity, has resulted in an increasing degradation of coastal ecosystems and its ecosystem services. As a background, Mexico is a contracting party of the Earth Summit, and after the ratification of the Rio Convention in 1992 has developed some initiatives, which mainly address the development of policy instruments including national strategies for the coastal zone protection; nevertheless the absence of a Marine and Coastal Policy was still an issue to address. However it was not until 2007 that, after scientists and experts urge, during the presentation of the “National Strategy for Ecological and Territorial Planning of Oceans and Coasts” (NSETPOC), that the former President Felipe Calderon Hinojosa, demanded the creation of an Inter-ministerial Commission for oceans and coasts to address the problems that take place in this important zone. At the same time it was presented the first coastal policy draft “National environmental policy for the sustainable development of the oceans and coasts of Mexico”, that after five years of revisions and * Corresponding author. E-mail addresses: juancarlos.nava@gmail.com (J.C. Nava Fuentes), pedro.arenas@ uca.es (P. Arenas Granados), filomena@ua.pt (F.C. Martins). 1 The Littorality index: Log10 (Continental Surface (km 2 )/Coastal line (km): 1 Very high; 1 < or 2 High; 2 < o  3 Medium; 3 < o  4 Low; and >4 Very low (Barrag an, 2012). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Ocean & Coastal Management journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2016.12.017 0964-5691/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Ocean & Coastal Management 137 (2017) 131e143