The Acceptable Change Limit

conclusion, different authors conclude that the numerical load capacities for stochastic systems (variables with many interacting elements) such as the Bacalar Lagoon, have not allowed to control, reduce or mitigate the impacts. Hence the importance and insistence of the proposals of the local communities in the vision of basin and integrated management of the territory, and not of the vision of generating protected islands, such as Natural Protected Areas.

McCool and Lime (2001) conclude “…The concept of tourist and recreational carrying capacity maintains an illusion of control when it comes to a seductive fiction, a social trap or a political myth. Instead, we should focus on deploying frameworks and strategies that determine which of the many plausible futures are desirable, what social, economic and environmental conditions are involved in tourism development, the acceptability of the trade-offs that would occur, and how affected people can be given a voice to articulate the concerns and values involved. While we could look for a term to name this process, the important thing is that we understand what the objectives of tourism development are, what the science says and how we can do better management, given those considerations.… While the search for carrying capacity has led to a great deal of research that has been useful for management, its continued use as a method to solve the problems of tourism development is inappropriate and reductionist.…”

The Acceptable Change Limit (LCA) method was created by social and forest scientists, who worked in recreation for the U.S. Forest Service and Department of Agriculture. Unlike the concept of Load Capacity, instead of focusing directly on looking for magic numbers, it focuses on determining how much change in the ideal initial conditions at a site, you are willing to accept. The LCA requires the definition of social and environmental conditions, desirable and acceptable, in a given area, while generating aligned measures and indicators that allow monitoring, decision-making, generating actions and

protecting these conditions. The goal of the LCA is to manage visitor impacts, rather than the number of visitors.

In order to determine the LCA, a participatory, comprehensive, collaborative and committed, non-simulated process is necessary to define management objectives; Identify what will be measured socially and environmentally and establish measurable standards to maintain those conditions.

That is, it is necessary to have a very complete and clear picture of the entire system and its operation, from social to environmental aspects, to determine the future social and environmental conditions that will be desirable. Not as subjective desires and good intentions, but as elements documented in depth and analyzed from the panoramic view of territory or landscape, not from the scale of species or specific site. Appropriate indicators must be established in order to assess the desirable social and environmental conditions, established in the previous step. For the design of indicators it is key to be able to select the appropriate counselors that fit the particular conditions of a site, activity or function, if you want to have an effective evaluation tool. It is not enough to establish what is to be measured, it is necessary to establish the minimum acceptable values in order to be able to make management decisions in time to reduce the potential for unacceptable change. These measures are used to inform the establishment of monitoring programs and management activities to ensure the maintenance of site conditions. The process must necessarily be collaborative because in the end consensus and commitments must be achieved by all actors. The key is that the actors involved represent the majority of the groups in the system that make direct or indirect use of it, that will benefit directly or indirectly, or that will be affected by the decisions taken. In the end there must be a consensus on the amount of change that is acceptable to all parties and not just one sector of society. When reviewing the Acceptable Change Limit methodology, proposed by Stankey, et al (1985) it consists of 9 steps with their purposes, processes and products. Together they are a continuous process of obtaining information for planning, generation of indicators and strategies for follow-up, monitoring and permanent feedback.

The design of indicators of the Acceptable Limit of Change requires an integrated approach of systems, especially in complex systems with human and natural elements interacting and self-organizing, as would be the case of the Bacalar Lagoon, where there are groups of users, decision makers and other types pursuing their own "interests" and contributing at the same time to the development and operation of the system, interacting with a large number of environmental factors within the system and in the area of influence.

The indicators that allow us to see how the system is behaving are a complicated selection, which requires a deep knowledge of everything. To know in the system what are the essential components, their mutual relations, top-down relationships and one with respect to another; understand how these essential components contribute to the performance of other components and how these essential components contribute to the performance of the total system.

When determining acceptable exchange rates, it is necessary to establish what kind of compensation you are in a position to accept. At this point the issue to be assessed is totally a human question: what kind of compensation are those affected willing to accept? How can the decision of elements that are negatively affected be compensated? If we were to use the example of Bacalar, taking into consideration the selected indicators. How will the increase in revenue of local businesses compensate for the pollution that will be generated in the body of water? How do we prevent this impact from the source? And this must be solidly grounded, not with the marketing discourse of the triad, even if it is presented with a doctoral degree. The LCA does not provide simple answers to the complicated questions, posed by the development of tourism activities or of any kind in a system and the significant impact they can exert, but it is also not achieved by looking for a magic number of carrying capacity. It requires information, capacity building, real leadership and governance. Therefore, the tangled way in which PROTUR was built, for example, arguing that it sought to establish the Limit of Acceptable Change with such a deficient and disjointed planning, was clearly only a media discourse to pressure the imposition of an instrument, without real bases and simulating participatory construction, which did not exist.