Model of governance for an urban mangrove in a context of ungovernability and social exclusion

A governance model called Triad is proposed according with the results of an integrated assessment of the urban mangrove ecosystem located along the waterways in the city of Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. The assessment shows the fragile state of this socio-ecological system. This model is based on the concept of ecosystem-based governance and is designed for a city with governability and social exclusion crises. The designed model was implemented through the participation of professionals, community groups, and businessmen in the design of a pilot productive project (PP). The selected PP was based on the available natural and social capital and the inuence it may have on the city’s sustainable development. The PP was carried out by the implementation of seven strategies within three lines of action: education, entrepreneurship, and participatory planning. Several indicators are proposed to evaluate the impacts of the seven strategies. The obstacles and challenges for PP implementation are also commented and discussed.


Introduction
The mangrove ecosystem forms "ecotones," or ecological transition zones, where the stages of life history of many marine, brackish, and fresh water species experience daily and seasonal variations in salinity and temperature as a result of tides and water runoff. A large number of these aquatic organisms constitute an important part of both the artisanal and industrial shery sectors, and some of them are prey to a great number of endemic and migratory bird species. In addition to its role in the production of goods and services (Van The mangrove ecosystem has experienced rapid changes worldwide, driven primarily by anthropogenic threats (Friess et al. 2019) such as urban development (Richards and Friess 2016; Thomas et al. 2017). Some urban centers have developed uncontrollably in areas of Latin America previously covered by mangroves. The loss of mangroves in an area exercise strong pressure on the remnants of the natural ecosystem (Barragán and De Andrés 2016), producing negative effects on local environmental (e.g. water quality) and biological (e.g. biodiversity, biological productivity) factors. Surviving mangroves within an urban area must be managed using complex social and ecological models. These models are based on the concepts of natural resource governance (Bielschowsky and Torres 2018) or adaptive governance for urban green spaces (Green et al. 2016).
The protection and management of mangroves have been well documented in literature (Van Lavieren et al. 2012). The latest publications suggest that management efforts must not only include interdisciplinary knowledge provided by scientists and professionals from non-governmental (Börger et al. 2018) and governmental (Culwick et al. 2019) organizations, but must also consider traditional or ancestral empirical knowledge provided by native communities (Romañach et al. 2018;Cains and Henshel 2019). This combined knowledge is fundamental for the success of any management intervention (Unesco 2012) and is needed to resolve challenges around urban sustainability.
Any selected model must contribute to the sustainability of local communities by including the development of community-managed projects in forestry, aquaculture, recreation, or tourism. This type of model is called Community Based Mangrove Management (CBMM), and it is used widely in South Asia, but very little in South America and Africa (Datta et al. 2012). These authors believe that this model has not yet been included in the planning of some cities with urban mangrove systems because this model appears antagonistic to market forces. On the other hand, Biermann et al. (2019) consider that the instability of many local governments is the reason for this model's reduced application. These authors suggest that the adaptive governance model must be adjusted to local conditions using innovative actions under the Earth System Governance project. This network organization works under a scienti c scheme of academic creativity, moving from disciplinarity to transdisciplinarity, with the engagement of different stakeholders and with a concept of governance that is unmarked from 'environmental politics.' Furthermore, Barbier (2016) points out that none of the studies have considered the in uence of social, cultural, and political aspects in managing this type of ecosystem. He then suggests lling this gap in the literature by conducting research not only on those aspects, but also on the economic aspects surrounding the management of those ecosystems. This article aims to ll this gap by designing a model for urban mangrove ecosystem management in the context of a city (Cartagena de Indias, Colombia) with weak governance, strong social exclusion, high environmental and biological deterioration, high cultural diversity, and prominent economic inequality. Likewise, this article contributes to previous literature by showing the way in which the results of the implementation of the model can be incorporated into existing government structures (Bodin 2017).

Integrated Assessment Of The Mangrove Ecosystem In Cartagena De Indias
The city of Cartagena is divided by two interconnected waterways, Caño de Juan Angola and the man-made channel parallel to the airport runway, into one undeveloped inland littoral zone and one dynamic commercial coastal zone. The shores along the two waterways are covered by a line of mangroves connecting Cartagena Bay and Ciénaga de la Virgen, which are the city's most important bodies of water (PNUMA 2009). A historical comparison of environmental (land use change, water quality) and biological (the number of sh species and individuals) records by season were analyzed. In addition, an analysis was done on biological data (the number of bird species and individuals, and the number of mangrove species). Finally, the socio-economic dimension was analyzed using data collected during interviews done by FUNCICAR et al. (2019) and information on the city's current state of affairs.

Land use data
The city's urban development has skyrocketed in the last nine decades thanks to what the local government was able to accomplish after Law 62 of 1937 was passed. This law empowered the local government to ll and urbanize the shores of the city's waterways and construct avenues between urbanizations located across those waterways. Although this law was supposedly passed to beautify the city and improve tra c, it gave the local government power to encourage low income communities to convert areas covered by mangroves into dry, empty land. This process took place within a framework where people were allowed to cut down mangroves from areas where water ow was easily restricted. These new areas were later lled with debris and sold to companies that took charge of their urban development. The destruction of vast areas of mangroves created a trade-off between the ecosystem's ecological value and the commercial value of the newly acquired dry land. The ecosystem's deterioration has ultimately had a negative effect on the city's resilience to future man-made and natural catastrophes ( Figure 1). According to available historical data, the land around the Caño de Juan Angola went from 30% urban, 30% mangrove, and 40% forests and wetlands in 1948 ( Figure 2 and Figure 3 top) to 85% urban, 5% mangrove and 10% wetlands in 2019 ( Figure 2 and Figure 3 bottom). On the other hand, the man-made channel parallel to the airport runway was built after 1949, when the connection between Caño de Juan Angola and Ciénaga de la Virgen was eliminated in order to build the airport's runway. The land around the man-made waterway went from 15% mangrove and 85% forest and wetlands in 1949, to 40% mangrove in the 1980s, and 20% mangrove, 40% forest and wetlands, and 40% urban in the last few years. For the latter case, the growth of the urban area has been controlled due to risks associated with building near the area of operation and takeoff of aircrafts. Despite the loss of mangrove coverage and the increase in urban areas, four species of Colombian Caribbean mangroves and many tropical dry forest species were found along the three sampling transects in this study ( Figure 4). The dry forest species are adapted to the saline and ooded shore soils.

Water quality data
The quality of marine water was determined in four sampling stations in 2019, using a marine water quality indicator called ICAM (Table 1) (Table 2). Despite the fact that there is no data to compare for the dry season in 2016, it is important to mention that 41 individuals from 6 sh species were caught during this season in 2019.

Bird sighting data
During this study, 506 individuals of 54 species and 762 individuals of 45 species were observed during the dry and semi-humid seasons of 2019, respectively (Table 3). This variation in the number of bird species could be an indication of their annual migration that is known to occur in the area of study. Comparison of the historic number of birds was not done because no previous studies of birds were found in the area of study.

Socioeconomic data
The Caño de Juan Angola acts as a natural boundary between two contrasting socioeconomic sectors in Cartagena de Indias ( Figure 5). One of the sectors is associated with a community involved in booming industries, ve-star tourism, and evident port activity, while the other sector is related to a community living in misery and poverty (low strata). The socioeconomic aspects of these heterogeneous communities in a dual city are dynamic and are linked to the environmental quality of the mangroves (Van Kempen 1994; Barrera and Guillén 2017). The city's extreme duality is supported by numerous studies that compare data based on socioeconomic issues among cities within the country. The city's social vulnerability value was found to be higher than those of the other thirteen most prominent cities in the country ( were men and women, respectively. All age groups, including 15% of young people, and all social strata from high to low income communities were represented in this survey. The majority of interviewees do not identify with any ethnic group; only 22% identi es themselves as being of African descent, with leadership capacity in the districts, and well educated (97% with college studies). However, this segment of the population has a high unemployment rate, close to 20%, which represents almost twice the city's unemployment (11.8%; DANE 2018). About 60 small informal businesses were located within the urban mangrove ecosystem and were classi ed in the sector of subsistence economy. Some of these traditional businesses have been on existence for more than ve years.
In this representative socio-ecological system, the community has a two-way economic relationship with the environment. On one hand, businessmen bene t by illegally occupying natural public areas in the city at no cost, where they are cooler than in their own homes. On the other hand, many of these businessmen throw their daily waste into the Caño de Juan Angola and expand their businesses by cutting down vegetation and building permanent infrastructure (Sánchez et al. 2012). Despite receiving services from the ecosystem, the businessmen appear to disregard those services and continue to cause irreparable harm to the ecosystem. During the interviews, however, some interviewees showed interest in the ecological restoration of the natural system and revealed their desire for the waterways to return to how they were during their childhood. They recall their childhood when they used to sh, sail, and swim in the waterways. The community leaders claimed to have an interest in the development of a sustainable project that takes advantage of the natural system.

The Bases For Selecting The Triad Model Of Governance
Two main government models for democracies were developed in the mid-20th century. The rst of these two models, called subgovernments, gave more in uence to the elite than to ordinary citizens in the decision process. The second model, called the iron triangle, was applied during the cold war in the United States, focusing on two main permanent stakeholders: the North American defense industry and the agroindustry (Estévez 2014). This type of state-carried hierarchical command and control-based approaches (Sattler et al. 2018), however, were not related to social needs, rather they were connected in some way with society's different interest groups.
Unlike the previous models, the model of governance that we propose, called Triad, is a community-based approach (Sattler et al. 2018). In general, it is based on the combined in uence that state, markets, and society have on social equity, sustainable development, and cooperative governance (Chiesa et al. 2013;Bárcena 2014). This model of governance requires cooperation and interaction among actors in a complex web of public and private interest (Prats 2001) to paci cally resolve their con icts in a variety of negotiation scenarios (Feldman 2001). This kind of model requires thinking about how the relation between the community and its environment is based on the concepts of environmental con ict sociology (Fontaine 2005), environmental governance (Barriga et al. 2007), territorial governance (Figueroa 2016), and the governance model of the commons (Ostrom 2009).
This new vision must bring opportunities to the whole community by considering people's capacities as well as their fundamental rights and freedoms (Prats 2001;Sen 2009). This approach will create a smart state that confronts poverty successfully and achieves social wellbeing and justice (Kliksberg 1998) for members of the local community. Under these considerations, and for the particular case study of highly impacted mangrove ecosystems in an urban setting, with high social exclusion and a lack of governability, we propose a mangrove management model that includes natural and social capital as the basis for the city's sustainable development.

Triad model architecture
The proposed model is based in the idea that non-state actors (private and civil society) must participate in the deliberation process. The architecture of governance for this study's model is proposed with actors building practical solutions from three key concepts: 1) sustainable development based on the services offered by the ecosystem, which is supported by the concept of ecosystem adaptation ( The purpose of the selected model was to generate synergy among three groups of actors (professionals, community leaders, and philanthropists or investors) by searching for mutual interest of work, wisdom, and wealth (3W, Fig. 6). Work is de ned as the time spent on an activity. Wisdom is described as the acquisition of scienti c and empirical knowledge. And wealth is interpreted as not only economic wealth, but also as human and social capital to initiate new productive and management processes (Cronin and Dearing 2017). An important part of the project includes a negotiation among the three groups of actors in which they paci cally recognize their common interests in a productive project (PP) supported by the 3W. These new business opportunities must be tied to the community's traditional business as well as to those of the region's businessmen.
Professionals from multidisciplinary backgrounds are in charge of leading the process by creating bonds of trust among community leaders and helping them in the selection of economically viable products offered by the ecosystem. During the joint selection of viable products, the professionals are able to assess the local community's ability to develop a sustainable and inclusive PP. After determining the community's competence in the selected PP, the professionals offer this PP to the philanthropists or investors in order to create partnerships between local communities and regional businesses in response to their own levels of exigency, but under their own community's capacities. This type of cooperated endeavors intends to generate economic opportunities regionally which, in turn, help in the redistribution of wealth, the elimination of social marginalization, and the increase in trust among the main community actors which ultimately foster a culture of peace.
In the context of a fragile governance and with enough signs of corruption, the PP was kept away from the local government to avoid any risk of getting involved in acts of corruption. Any involvement in acts of corruption could produce long-lasting damage to con dence in the PP. Only when the PP's maturation process is well advanced will it be prudent and recommendable to establish a connection with the local government. The PP must be directed to coincide with the local government's plans and programs which, in turn, allow the PP to achieve social incidence and empower participatory democracy. Only in this phase do the public-private participatory partnerships become a fundamental component for the social capital in the promotion of the governance ( Barriga et al. 2007). In general, the model used in the development of this PP offers the actors multidimensional wellbeing that includes the happiness and the pleasure of achieving their interests and goals, beyond merely economic satisfaction. A person's reward is evaluated not from the point of view of income, but from her capacity of having a real opportunity to live (Sen 2009).

Model application for the development of a pilot PP
During the application of the model, we suggested three lines of action and seven strategies to follow as the professional group began to interact with the other two actors. Initially, the group of professionals were in charge of the education of local community members. This line of action must be executed in all social intervention processes and must be followed by another two lines of action related to entrepreneurship and participatory planning (Fig. 7).

Line of action I: Education
This line of action responds to the following questions: What do young people know about their neighborhood? What can they do as students to teach the whole community about the value of ecosystems and the reasons to take care of them? To respond to these questions, a robust pedagogy section was included in the model following the environmental pedagogy proposed by Álvarez (2015). This model works under the concepts of complex thinking and transdisciplinarity (Morín 1996;Moreno et al. 2002; Barberousse 2008; Serna 2016) as the fundamental elements of educational and pedagogical processes. These elements not only express the quality, amount, and type of knowledge to transmit, but also determine the type of current society and the role of the people that intervene in the act of education. This pedagogical focus must be harmonized between the people and their surroundings from relational, conceptual, attitudinal, and procedural development aspects according to the degree of maturation of boys, girls, and youth. Also, it must go beyond the traditional formal education that raises awareness and sensitizes, towards an education for action, with approaches such as participatory action research (Fals-Borda 1999) and citizen sciences (ECSA 2015).
Under this focus, the Multiplier Environmental Group (MEG) was created in the year 2015. This group was made up of students from public and private high schools, through a program called pedagogical pact. The permanent focus of this group was to confront major problems such as the abandonment of mangrove areas where garbage and waste are deposited, and the lack of knowledge and culture in relation to the goods and services provided by nature (Friess et al. 2019). This environmental high school project (PRAES) breaks formal education paradigms.
It changes the scheme of classes in rooms for meetings outside in open elds, homework for multiplier exercises, and student isolation to comply with academic obligations for the student interaction with community members to confront their social reality. What the students learned was transmitted to their social network (e.g. family, classmates, neighbors) using playful and cultural teaching techniques. These innovative techniques played an important role in the students' multiplier work in the rst three years of the project. In the fourth year, the process became more established when the young ones showed greater appropriation of their role as generators of change. Table 4 shows the indicators that could be used to evaluate the effect of the activities related to environmental and biological strategies. to urban mangroves as a natural system? What do the people in the eight neighborhoods think about their economic activities and, in general, their relationship with the mangroves?
The best commercial and environmental practices were proposed for the development of a sustainable pilot PP based on both traditional community activities and an innovative business based on the services provided by the mangrove ecosystem. To begin, and as a product of the negotiation between the three type actors, the project Sailing Through Cartagena (Navegando por Cartagena) was born. This PP takes advantage of possibility of navigation provided by the channels of the mangrove ecosystem as a basis for the so-called innovative, conscious tourism (Castillo-Montesdeoca et al. 2017). The development of these activities may be evaluated using the indicators in Table 5. Proceeding with workshops of understanding among stakeholders until the pilot PP was agreed was proposed. Then, the process of having meetings with institutions would begin. This process could be evaluated using the indicators in Table 6.

Triad model implementation
The Triad model was designed according to the integrated assessment of the urban mangrove ecosystem located along the waterways of Cartagena de Indias. Despite the low water quality, loss of mangrove habitat, and a reduced number of sh, the natural system appeared to support a considerable number of individuals of a variety of bird species. Regardless of this city's current socioeconomic, biological, environmental, and political crises, the triad model's three lines of action and seven strategies were carried out to assess the services offered by the ecosystem's current state and the community's social capital. Traditional activities executed individually by community groups were analyzed and contrasted until the areas of common interest among all community sectors were identi ed. During the course of this process, public and private sectors of the community gained awareness of their role toward a bottom-up redistribution of wealth within the city. At the end of the process, a suitable pilot PP called Sailing Through Cartagena was designed to take advantage of the services provided to the community by the mangrove ecosystem (Barbier et al. 2010). Furthermore, this project contributes to the conservation of the mangrove forest and therefore recognizes its role in the process of carbon sequestration (Howard et al. 2017).
This PP has the potential to improve the quality of the ecosystem which, in turn, increases the city's resilience to the effects of extreme weather events associated with climate change. This PP could be included in plan 4C, which Cartagena adopted to adapt to climate change. The improvement of the city's resilience will not only be bene cial for the landowners and their property values, but could also boost the recreation and tourism industry. After Cartagena de Indias was declared a world heritage site by the UNESCO in 1984 for its architectural beauty and historical importance, the city's economy became mainly associated with the tourism sector. This economic sector rapidly acquired a great number of properties located along the waterways and water bodies within the city. The most plausible opportunity was to develop a plan in which artisan shermen could take tourists on their boats to navigate along the restored waterways of Cartagena de Indias. The shermen could not only bene t by driving their boat, but could promote the city to their audience. During the time the boat is transporting tourists, the shermen may transfer their local knowledge to the tourists about the city's history, traditional activities (e.g. shing), biodiversity, and culture (e.g. music, food). As the PP develops, the city's businesses will bene t by having additional tour guides around the city. This pilot PP t into the concept of Conscious Tourism (Castillo-Montesdeoca et al. 2017) and adheres to other proposals such as Nature-based Solutions (IUCN 2019). Thus, the Triad model with its PP manages to envision a second generation of market policies with a social approach. Instead of conditional cash transfer programs, the private sector, civil society organizations, and local communities could agree on new forms of collaboration, production with social innovation (Bárcena 2014).
Among the main obstacles for the development of these kind of projects are the absence of environmental sensitivity from an important part of community, the scarcity of private investment in waterways, the local government's inability to effectively manage projects based on sustainable development of ecosystems, the government's lack of interest in maintaining law and order for the protection of the city's wetlands, and insu cient self-control of the political class.
Two challenges remain. Firstly, the actual implementation of the pilot PP must be technically and economically feasible. Secondly, the implementation of the project must be accompanied by a monitoring plan based on data collection from the ful llment of the seven strategies (Tables 4, 5, and 6), to track the changes in the socioecological system, and thus demonstrate the model's operability to improve social and environmental conditions. Declarations o Ethics approval and consent to participate: This paper does not contain any study with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors.
o Consent for publication: The authors declare their willingness to transfer the publication rights of this original paper.
o Availability of data and materials: The authors declare that the main primary data supporting the ndings of this study are available within the article. The sources of secondary data are described within the article.
o Competing interests: The authors declare that they have no con ict of interest.
o Funding: This research work was carried out with nancial support from Universidad Nacional de Colombia (HERMES code 44332).
o Authors' contributions: This paper is a product of Fernando Sánchez-Rubio's doctoral thesis in marine sciences, directed by Adrián Saldarriaga-Isaza. They and Guillermo Sánchez-Rubio participated in the structuring and writing of the paper. Saldarriaga-Isaza prepared the paper for submission.
o Acknowledgements: We thank Adriana Londoño Rentería for providing editing assistance in a preliminary version of this paper. Figure 1 Environmental aspects in the waterways of Cartagena de Indias        Triad model engineering. Educative process (yellow); entrepreneurship process (blue); participative planning (red). Source: The author, based on Loyo (2002).