Institutional Reform in Galapagos
Graham Watkins and Johannah Barry
January 2010
Introduction
In 2007, the Government of Ecuador and UNESCO (United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) recognized that the
direction of development in the Galapagos was not sustainable and directly in conflict
with conservation. The joint
acknowledgement of failure to preserve and protect this extraordinary world
treasure led to its inclusion on the World Heritage Sites in Danger
roster. This recognition was a turning
point in the history of the islands; it was an unprecedented call for all
actors to change the direction of management and development in order to ensure
a sustainable future that contributes to the conservation of the archipelago. In some ways, this call to action mirrored
the call made in the 1950s by scientists and conservationists that led to the
formation of the Charles Darwin
Foundation, the establishment of the Galapagos
National Park and the
conservation of key endangered species in the islands. The problem now is that the threats are
greater, more complex and more difficult to manage than the threats of 50 years
ago.
Galapagos has been in crisis since the early 1990s when
tourism-driven economic growth dramatically altered the political, social,
cultural and ecological realities of the archipelago. Economic interests attracted immigrants,
drove over-harvests, increased political patronage, sparked conflict and
produced new ecological risks. The early
years of the 1990s were marred by severe and violent conflicts, including
multiple takeovers of Park and Station property (one park warden shot), mass
slaughter of over 80 tortoises on Isabela Island, and public threats against tourists broadcast
over the radio by local political
leaders. This troubling level of
violence and chaos led to the development of the 1998 Special Law for
Galapagos. The law, in its spirit,
attempted to knit together seemingly disparate visions and stakeholder
priorities, seeking to conserve ecological and evolutionary processes and
mandate local involvement in decision-making.
Unfortunately implementation of key components of the law,
so crucial for sustainable human development, has been weak. The Special Law spoke to sweeping educational
reform, strict controls on migration, and wider and more genuine involvement of
residents in public policy and economic development. However, fragile leadership and resistance to
change from many sectors have impeded action.
The education sector, long protected by a strong union, showed little
interest in undertaking the task of significant educational reform. The tourism industry, which has profited from
pricing structures long outdated, was reluctant to agree to fees and concession
prices that reflected today’s dollars.
Builders and outside investors, correctly sensing a chaotic and
patchwork system of zoning regulations, had little motivation to insist on a
streamlined regulatory system which would in all likelihood impact their
currently untrammeled access to land and resources. Market forces have disproportionately influenced
decision making and outdated fiscal polices, historically directed at
subsidizing early colonization, have
confounded efforts to ensure a conservation-centered approach.
This article examines the capacities within Galapagos –
laws, organizations, and leadership –which were party to addressing the
visionary aspect of the 1998 Special Law for Galapagos and which have participated in its failure. Solutions to the seemingly intractable management
situation in Galapagos require a particular ingenuity unique to Galapagos. We suggest that the same fluid management
structures and opportunistic endeavors which led to Galapagos to its current
status as a World Heritage Site in Danger may also be the key to a set of
legal, cultural and economic policies which will protect Galapagos into the
future.
Governance in Galapagos
The ability to describe and move forward a vision comes from
an organic process in which personal insights and perspectives align, in some
cases serendipitously, with the needs and aspirations of a larger, interested
group. Moving Galapagos towards a
sustainable future will be the result of enlightened and charismatic
leadership.
Governance refers to the
institutions, either designated by law or ordinance to participate or which
arise or evolve to “fill gaps” which have both the authority and responsibility
to carry out specific tasks of public policy.
There are over fifty central government organizations and nine local
government organizations with responsibilities in Galapagos. Only some of these
are tied into a centralized framework for decision making, and their presence
creates satellite governing structures and frameworks in which decisions get
made (and sometimes unmade). Along with
these governmental institutions, there is a growing network of civil society
organizations (labor, education, religious) which operate in Galapagos and
influence, but do not significantly alter, political decision-making (with the
possible exception of fishing cooperatives which have been often used as
political weapons during local elections).
There are three institutions which have which
have emerged as competent, albeit overburdened, agents with political and
intellectual heft. Of particular
interest is that two of them do not have specific public policy
responsibilities but have emerged as intellectual leaders (and occasional
lightening rods) in Galapagos politics.
The third, a management institution created by the Government of Ecuador,
is now in the process of being dismantled in its current form, but its function
will remain as part of a permanent management design.
Charles Darwin Foundation for the Galapagos
Islands
The oldest institution in
Galapagos with a continuous history of management and technical expertise is
the Charles Darwin Foundation. Oddly, while its mandate as an advisory
institution to the Government of Ecuador, and its foreign, independent legal
status would preclude directive management, its influence on public policy
direction and intent is unmistakable.
In the 1950s, the International
Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources (IUCN) and other
moved forward to establish a scientific research station in the Galapagos Islands. The “Charles Darwin
Research Station” served as a catalyst for multiple policy and legislative
changes in the Galapagos including in the late 1960s the strengthening of the
Galapagos National Park Service and the development of tourism. Arguably, the initiative to establish the
Charles Darwin Research Station and
to strengthen the Galapagos National Park Service has been the most important
influences on the present state of Galapagos.
The primary purpose, at
establishment, of the Charles Darwin
Research Station and the Galapagos National Park Service was to address
research and conservation issues in the Islands. The CDF operates under an agreement, signed
every 25 years and managed through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which gives
the CDF unusual access and voice within the conservation movement in Ecuador. The CDF’s mandate is to provide technical
advice to the Government of Ecuador on the management of the Galapagos National Park
and in this way, CDF has a powerful, nonpartisan, influence on conservation
decision-making.
Its long, uninterrupted
presence in Galapagos, largely due to its formal relationship with the Government
of Ecuador and its financial viability (a result of funding streams independent
of the government) has provided the CDF
and its work with significant visibility in the local, national, and
international community. This status has
not been without its detractors. While
the CDF is represented in virtually all public fora, consulted in local and
national decisions on conservation, and is a large economic presence in the
islands, a public opinion poll by Barber
and Ospina (2008), reflected CDF’s
extremely low scores in the public’s confidence precisely for this financial
independence and “sole” commitment to conservation. As respected an intellectual leader as the
CDF is, reflected in its continuing, formal presence as a foreign agency under
agreement with the national government,
it faces an uneasy relationship with the growing number of new residents who
are indifferent and even hostile to conservation.
Galapagos National
Park Service
The Galapagos National Park
Service was established six years after the Charles Darwin
Foundation as is the government agency responsible for the management of the
terrestrial and marine protected areas which constitute the Galapagos National Park. This body is comprised of wildlife biologists
and managers and is headed by a Director who is appointed by the
President. In past, this selection
process has devolved into unfortunate political theater, with the park
directorship becoming a political football tossed between political factions
seeking access to the significant economic opportunities managed and determined
by the Director.
That being said, the Park has
significant access to the international press, bi-lateral aid agencies, and a
wide and engaged public which has been rallied on several significant occasions
to put pressure on the central government to change policies and tactics. The Park Service is a major employer in Galapagos, but it is
worth mentioning that the local and central government employs over ten times
the number of people current employed by the Park (2100 vs. 250) (Galapagos
Report-2008). The Park is well financed, and enjoys a budget significantly
larger than any park in South America and is closer to the budgets of the Great
Barrier Reef and Yellowstone National Park (Epler, 2007) In the final analysis, while the Park’s
public image rises and falls with the resident’s perceptions of how Park
management will immediately benefit them, the Park Service and its Director are
central figures in Galapagos management and economic sustainability.
Galapagos National Institute
At the time of the Special Law,
the Galapagos National Institute (INGALA) was created to assume responsibility
for migration and development in Galapagos.
Establishing the Galapagos National Institute was an important first
step and an indication that the central government understood the importance of
a streamlined political body in Galapagos.
This body was intended to be responsive to the various economic and
political interests in Galapagos through representation of those sectors on the
INGALA Council.
INGALA bore the brunt of public
disfavor soon after the Special Law was passed.
An institution created to carry out the implementation of the law,
INGALA was woefully underfunded and minimally staffed. The optimism which accompanied this sweeping
legislation and the willingness that residents displayed in agreeing to modify
or amend behavior related to conservation had its roots in what residents
believed would be immediate and significant economic benefits. When those benefits were not forthcoming,
INGALA’s public image declined and Galapagos residents, according to the Barber/Ospina
opinion poll, provided some of the harshest, negative feedback in terms of
public trust and credibility.
Despite the Galapagos public’s
expressed unhappiness with INGALA, President Correa continues to rely on this
institution to address critical Galapagos issues. In 2007, he tasked INGALA to take immediate stock of all aspects of
growing human impact in Galapagos (migration, residency, illegal residents) and
their biological outcomes (invasive species, land and resource use). Added to INGALA’s directive was the task of
determining how any and all measures to bring Galapagos back to a largely
uncompromised system would be financed.
Although imperfectly, the
INGALA Council and assorted other actors in Galapagos responded quickly to the
demands of the central government.
Within a year, a Total Control Plan for invasive species was developed
and approved and a funding mechanism/endowment was capitalized with Ecuadorian
Government funding, external private funding, and bi-lateral funding. Government institutions within Galapagos are
scheduled to be simplified and
streamlined and many illegal or “ irregular” residents have already been
returned to the mainland under a successful, locally initiated buyout
program. At the time of this writing,
the central government is rethinking the “shape” but not the function of INGALA
as part of a streamlined management system.
One possible scenario is to develop a planning entity within a
strengthened government office. The idea
of a Galapagos-based management capacity responsible to the central government,
with streamlined responsibilities, will continue in Galapagos
The Galapagos Special Law of 1998
In the history of Galapagos, the establishment of new
institutions and organizations has been ad hoc to resolve particular issues
rather than based on a shared vision and a well defined strategic direction for
the islands. Often, new institutions have been created to cater to particularly
vocal special interests rather than based on a strategic objective. While in any complex setting, decisions are
made through institutions and formal (and informal) networks, Galapagos
presents additional levels of complexity and unconventional processes.
Galapagos is a special case within special cases – an island
system with an associated protected area.
The special geographical and social characteristics of this isolated
archipelago have given rise to alternative power and decision making
structures, and have given an unusual level of autonomy and leadership to a
small number of key players. It is this context that makes the development of
the Special Law so remarkable. Contrary
to the usual process of negotiation between lawyers of powerful sectors , the
Special Law was one of the first pieces of legislation to be prepared, from
inception, through a participatory process in which all actors, many hostile to
each others interest, were invited to take part.
In the early 1990s, UNESCO threatened to place the islands
on the endangered list – and this resulted in the establishment of a Permanent
Commission for Galapagos in 1994. In the mid 1990s, a breakdown in the social order,
reflected in hostile demonstrations against the Park and Station, shootings,
and threats of violence against tourists (including a standoff between tour
boats and fishing boats in the waters of Espanola) led to the collaborative development of the
1998 Special Law for Galapagos. The
new Law reflected the multiple interests in Galapagos including tourism,
conservation, research, and fishing and mandated local involvement in decision
making, immigration regulation, and educational reform. The law also,
commendably, created the Galapagos Marine Reserve, provided several fora for
discussion and collaborative management, defined business reform, and
established mechanisms to reduce the risks from invasive species.
Conceived and enacted at a time of both economic vigor in Ecuador and
optimism that a group of thoughtful actors could influence an otherwise dire
trajectory, The Special Law prioritized conserving ecological and evolutionary
processes and, to this end, dictated the application of the precautionary
principle. To be specific, any
legislative action would be required to “anticipate” harm and to demonstrate
that the consequence of legislation would not damage or adversely affect
critical ecological activity. The Law
also mandated local involvement in decision making, increased local equity in
business development, the control of invasive species, and educational
reform. Conflict, unsustainable tourism
growth, over harvests of fisheries, unregulated immigration, organizational
instability, new invasive species, and failed educational reform mark the ten
years since the approval of the Special Law.
This leads to the obvious question.
What went wrong?
After the Special Law
The 1998 Special Law was an important legal document in
terms of the far reaching and visionary language with which it sought to create
a new order in Galapagos. That otherwise
disengaged or even hostile parties would come together in earnest over two
years to hammer out a comprehensive management plan might lead one to conclude
that at long last, the entrepreneurial, frontier
mentality of Galapagos had somehow been replaced with an enlightened self
interest. However, the uneven implementation of the Special Law
revealed that no such epiphany took place. The Special Law, in its
eagerness to comply with external forces assumed to be hostile to Ecuador’s
national pride and world image, attempted to merge multiple visions for the
future of the islands. In some cases, these visions, which were not
necessarily compatible, were not described in sufficient detail as to obviate
any clear incompatibility. To the latter point - several things went wrong.
The implementation of the Special Law over the ensuing years
drew attention to these incompatibilities. The preferential allocation of
tourism rights to Galapagos residents was a politically and socially laudable
goal but difficult to implement in terms of low volume high value tourism
development. Local residents had neither
access to credit nor market access nor could they penetrate an entrenched
private enterprise that controls the existing tourism concessions in the
islands.
Enhancing local agricultural production to minimize imports
and so reduce the risk of invasive species while providing local employment was
equally laudable – but difficult to implement when labor immigration is
restricted and the costs of subsidized imported agricultural products are lower
than those produced in the islands. Discussions within the Participatory
Management Board created by the Special Law revealed the severe dichotomy
between what conservationists termed artisanal fishing (small scale) and
subsistence fishing – and the commercial extraction of lobster and sea
cucumber; an incompatibility readily revealed through discussions of long
lining and ultimately the need to establish “mother ships” to process
sufficient volumes of pelagic species for export markets.
In essence, the Special Law could not be implemented because
fundamental incompatibilities had not been fully resolved. This, in hindsight,
is not surprising given the often diametrically opposed perspectives that had
to be brought to the table to develop the Special Law. Perhaps the most
enlightened mechanism in the Special Law was the establishment of the
Participatory Management Board – ostensibly set up to resolve outstanding
disagreements. Unfortunately, the Board
proved a huge disappointment because of its forced focus on fisheries as
discussions on the far more critical tourism issues were avoided through legal
and political maneuvering by powerful tourism companies.
In its simplest terms, the most glaring omission of the
Special Law was that it called for reduced immigration, greater benefits for
residents, and the control of invasive species but made no inroads into
changing the “status quo” within tourism. Rather than affect the primary
economic source – established tourism – and its established political and
economic power base, the Special Law moved Galapagos toward growth in marginal
businesses in agriculture and fishing and enhancing benefit flows to locals
through increased public sector expenditure; the subsequent growth of land
based tourism was not surprising from an economic perspective.
The law aggregated complexity, increased an already bloated
government bureaucracy, and created multiple opportunities for political
influence and corruption. The law
created new organizations, and mandated different powers for existing
organizations, that were then overlaid on the existing systems of national,
regional, and local government. While the law enacted mechanisms for
institutional coordination, including the INGALA Council and the Committee for
Institutional Coordination, these mechanisms proved ineffective for the ten years
from 1998. The organizational spider’s web of Galapagos became further
complicated by national political instability – leading to constant turnover in
Galapagos organizations concurrent with changes in the nation’s political
leadership. The end result is that the law obfuscated the situation and through
its own institutional complexity minimized the likelihood of effective
implementation.
Moving Forward
The starting point for any process of change is to establish
a clearly articulated vision for the future and define strong, centralized
leadership. Rather than disparate
parties owning and acting on components of world view particular to their own
sense of what Galapagos can offer - the case in the Galapagos of today - we
assert that Galapagos requires a single overarching vision which has at its
core an explicit recognition of the primacy of biodiversity conservation. That said, an equally central component to
this vision is the leadership to implement and keep alive this vision.
The word “vision” may strike some as either an arbitrary
goal or, in the other extreme, a fanciful collection of beliefs. It is neither. It is an articulated and well understood
trajectory, delineating the most desirable alternative future based on current
and projected trends. It is clear that a
shared vision for the future of Galapagos does not exist – and this is a
failing of the leadership in Galapagos. As an example, there is disagreement on
the market focus, business structures, and regulatory frameworks required for
sustainable tourism; there is also disagreement on the measures and tools
required for the conservation of the islands. On the other hand, one major
element of a Galapagos future is generally agreed upon - the need for
educational reform; though, there is clearly disagreement within the education
profession as to how to create reform. Once leadership is clarified, the
primary task must be to articulate this future and the specific path to its
realization. In its absence, weak
organizations will permit disparate interests to flourish leading to continued
degradation of the social and ecological environment in the Galapagos. The
participatory process of developing this vision will demand a great deal from
the new Government Council for Galapagos – do the leadership skills or
individuals exist for this transition towards consensus?
This agreed future state for
Galapagos must be the basis for all subsequent actions. Some elements of that
vision will be highly contentious, including how tourism businesses will be
structured, the future role of agriculture and fishing, the required and most
efficient government organizational structures, and the priorities for
conservation action. Development of the new vision will therefore require
substantial conflict management skills and leadership skills. Once constructed
the vision will need to be effectively communicated to all involved parties –
one tool for this is the planned revision of the 1998 Special Law for
Galapagos. Unfortunately, however, it would seem that this revision is being
undertaken in the vacuum of not having a shared vision for the islands – as a
somewhat top-down process from central government. Given the opportunistic,
entrepreneurial history of Galapagos it is unlikely that a top-down driven
approach will meet with success in the long term.
The Special Law for Galapagos
is now being rewritten and will be implemented in 2010. Will Ecuadorian leadership, the new
Government Council, act on behalf of the whole including national interests,
think systemically and seek innovation and opportunity to transform conflicts
so as to construct a new future?
Within the small communities
which make up Galapagos, it is unlikely that we will find all of the leadership
and other skills and talents required for creating a sustainable society and
ensuring long term conservation. It is critically important to recognize the
trade-off between, on one hand, ensuring provision of local benefits through
employment and, on the other hand, in ensuring efficient organizational
function. What is noteworthy is that the institutions which have been
identified as critical to the well-functioning of Galapagos - Galapagos National Park, the Charles Darwin Foundation, INGALA, have completely disparate
roles. Only the latter has an actual
governance mandate, and yet the former two are critical players in long-term
conservation decision making.
What we may discover is that the fluid and adaptive nature
of Galapagos also defines its most effective governance structure. It may well be that the unique and
occasionally inconvenient presence of national and international bodies,
speaking independently but with authority and context, will be an important
part of public policy in this archipelago.
Management, driven by science and biodiversity conservation, suggests
that the Park will continue to play a critical role in decision making. While this presence of science-based decision
making may seem inconsistent with municipal governance, we recall that
Galapagos is still a national park. That
essential management distinction calls for a framework that includes, in a
viable and robust manner, the presence of parties unresponsive to (or largely
disinterested in) economic development.
But finally, Galapagos has residents who have the right to
live and prosper. Those voices need to
be heard and considered. This would
suggest that some governing structure with an effective planning and management
arm capable of listening to these voices and devising policies that meld local
opportunities and conservation.
Change will be sustainable and long term if 1) a clear
vision for the future is established, 2) this vision is effectively
communicated, and 3) changes are implemented in the context of this vision. The
fundamental aspects of this vision for the future of the islands should be
encompassed in a clear measurable state policy for Galapagos. This policy
should clearly establish limits to development and bind all levels of
society. The vision should clearly
establish the base conditions under which resource extraction or tourism
development should occur – including the demonstration of sustainability, open
and transparent choice of businesses, and commitment to certification, respect
for employees, local equity and environmental risk minimization. If we can
achieve this then it is highly likely that there will be a Galapagos in 50
years that is better conserved than today.
