ABSTRACT
This chapter explores, from a governance perspective, how the global discourse about climate change has unfolded on a local level in Tulum, a tourist destination in Mexico in which a group of Italian second home owners settled a decade ago. Tulum experienced a major increase in tourism that also exerted massive pressure on the climate, in this case by creating plastic waste. In this chapter, we examine how the second home owners negotiate their position and resources with the various actors (governments, local residents, private sector, and tourists) in local and regional political spaces using environmental changes (plastic) as a concrete tool. When we talk about climate governance, we understand it as a global agenda-setting issue and as an emerging new arena for broader political struggles over power, authority, and territorial control. We seek in this chapter to open a progressive space for discussion and dialogue and to challenge the existing policies on climate change; we aim to provide new understandings of a sustainability agenda in which participation and collaboration are in the fore and in which entrepreneurs (second home owners in this case) play a pivotal role in shaping and reshaping the implementation process.
