Behind Every Indicator Is a Conversation

By the time the team behind the preparation of the Gulf of Mexico's five Coastal and Marine Report Cards completed its fieldwork, they had travelled more than 5,100 kilometers, visited 56 coastal communities, and spoken with hundreds of people across Mexico's Gulf coast.

Those numbers tell part of the story. What the team remembers most, however, is not the distance travelled or the number of workshops organized. They remember the conversations.

Conversations with fishers who described the sea not simply as a resource, but as part of their identity. With traditional cooks whose recipes carry generations of ecological knowledge. With community members who had spent years adapting to change, protecting mangroves, and caring for the places they call home.

Those conversations became the foundation of the five Coastal and Marine Report Cards developed by Mexico's National Coastal Resilience Laboratory (LANRESC) through the Implementation of the Strategic Action Programme of the Gulf of Mexico Large Marine Ecosystem Project (GoM SAP). The recently launched Report Cards bring together environmental, social, and economic information to provide an accessible picture of the health of coastal socio-ecosystems and help communities, practitioners, institutions, and decision-makers identify priorities for action.

When the fieldwork began, the team expected to encounter very different realities across the five Gulf states: Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, and Yucatán. They did. Every community has its own history, culture, economy, and relationship with the coast. Yet one pattern quickly emerged.

"People talked about different places, but many of the challenges and changes they were facing were the same,"

recalls Andrea Reyes, who participated in the field process.

"They also spoke about something that is not always visible: people who have spent years adapting, finding solutions, caring for their territories, and resisting."

Those conversations reshaped the team's approach. The goal was never to evaluate communities from the outside, but to build the Report Cards with them. Rather than arriving with rigid questionnaires, they focused on creating a dialogue that enriched and broadened the scope that was initially envisioned.

"We didn't want people to simply answer our questions,"

Reyes explains.

"We wanted to create conversations because they are the ones who truly know their territory. They have witnessed changes in the sea, the mangroves, the fisheries, and the ways of life in their communities."

Collecting information was never the hardest part. Building trust was.

Across the Gulf coast, many communities have participated in projects that requested information but never returned to share the results or explain how their knowledge had been used. That is why, LANRESC returned to the field and sent hundreds of Report Cards to their collaborators, once they were completed.

"More than rejection, the greatest challenge was building trust,"

says Marta Paola Rodríguez González, who participated in the fieldwork across the Gulf coast.

"Many communities are understandably tired of projects that collect information but rarely return anything to the people who participated."

That required transparency from the beginning—explaining what the Report Cards were, how the information would be used, and why every participant's contribution mattered.

For project team member Karol Paulina Granados Martínez, another challenge emerged early in the process.

"Many people initially didn't understand what the Report Cards were or how they could be useful,"

she says.

"As the process moved forward, that initial skepticism gradually turned into interest and a sense of ownership."

Some of the strongest memories from the project have little to do with technical discussions.

Reyes remembers a livestock producer in Veracruz who began restoring mangroves after rethinking his relationship with the land. She remembers a traditional cook from the Chontal indigenous people in Pantanos de Centla, Tabasco, whose recipes carry generations of traditional ecological knowledge. She also remembers Las Chelemeras in Yucatán, a community group that organized to restore mangroves because, for them, protecting the ecosystem meant not only protecting their history, but also securing a legacy for their children.

"The sea is not simply a resource,"

Reyes reflects.

"For many people, it is family, identity, and a way of life."

The team discovered that every indicator represented something larger than a grade: years of restoration, generations of knowledge, different environmental values, and the daily reality of families living along the coast.

Understanding the Gulf of Mexico meant listening to all of them.

This collaborative and transdisciplinary approach, directly incorporates the values, needs and local ecological knowledge of communities into the assessment. So, when the Report Cards were near its completion, people began recognizing their own knowledge in the results, in the shape of tailored indicators and accurate gradings.

During the validation workshops, participants discussed the indicators, proposed improvements, and identified opportunities for future collaboration.

"The greatest satisfaction came when we shared the final versions and saw the Report Cards become a meeting point for different sectors,"

says Granados Martínez.

"Beyond the indicators and the data, the real achievement was creating a space for dialogue about the region and its future."

Even before the Report Cards were completed, Rodríguez González saw the process spark new collaborations and stronger connections among institutions and communities.

"In many ways,"

she says,

"we weren't simply delivering a product. We were helping strengthen a community committed to continuing this work together."

The Report Cards summarize an enormous amount of scientific information. But they also remind us that the territory is a source of knowledge and that understanding it means listening to the communities that inhabit it. For Reyes, that may be the project's most important lesson.

"When we talk about conservation, we often focus on environmental indicators and ecosystem change. But the fieldwork reminded us that there is also a biocultural heritage that deserves to be protected. The Gulf of Mexico Report Cards are, in essence, an invitation to listen."

Report Cards Website: https://pae-gem.lanresc.mx/

Geoportal: https://geoportal-gef.lanresc.mx/

The Strategic Action Programme for the Gulf of Mexico Large Marine Ecosystem (GoM SAP) is a regional initiative bringing together Mexico, the United States, and multiple partners and collaborators to protect and restore the Gulf of Mexico. It is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by the UN Environment Programme through the United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS) in collaboration with SEMARNAT and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Words by Diana Zazueta, GoM SAP Communications Specialist: dianagabrielaz@unops.org

Photos by LANRESC