The construction of a marina and the diversion of Arroyo Santiago for the Costa Palmas tourism and real estate project, run by the company Desarrolladora La Ribera, has modified the coastline and jeopardized the right to fish of 80 fishermen in the community of La Ribera, Baja California Sur.
In some sections the beach has eroded and in others it has gained ground to the sea, a process known as accretion. Regarding the latter case, the project has appropriated the land left behind by the receding sea and has obtained the concession of the Federal Maritime Terrestrial Zone (Zofemat), which is equivalent to 20 meters wide adjacent to the sea.
Due to the increase in the beach, the fishermen's concession is no longer on the seashore, but about 200 meters inland on an area that is no longer suitable for stranding and debarring their boats.
“At that time, the sea bathed the sand about 200 meters higher. Later, Costa Palmas gained land to the sea, the beach retreated and the sea went further,” explained Mario Leal Armenta, secretary of the Federation of Cooperative Societies of Southern Los Cabos, which brings together nine cooperatives, including Cooperativa Leal, of which he is a member.
According to Leal, neither of the two concessions meets the objective for which they were granted, since the one in Costa Palmas is for conservation, and the one for fishermen is for stranding and debaring boats, uses that are not currently given to them.
For this reason, for a year now, fishermen have been demanding that the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (Semarnat) revoke both concessions and provide the City Council of Los Cabos with a provisional destination agreement to maintain public use of the beach.
“With the provisional destination agreement, the municipality would be responsible for managing the area and then they will decide if it is granted to the community, the federation or the cooperatives, but right now what we want is for the community of La Ribera not to lose its beaches and keep them in common use,” Leal said.
For this report, Causa Natura Media contacted the company Desarrolladora La Ribera through the communication channels available in Costa Palmas and up to the time of publication there has been no response.
“Sun and... beach?” tourism
Costa Palmas master plan. Source: Costa Palmas website.
Starting in 2006, Costa Palmas settled in front of a 3.2 kilometer beach on an area of 360 hectares of communal land at the mouth of Arroyo Santiago, which has a fan shape of 4.3 kilometers wide. The site extended a coastal wetland with nine hectares of water bodies, 5.9 hectares of dunes and 1.9 hectares of palm groves, which were removed or filled in to stabilize the soil.
The stream provided sediment to an extensive beach of 7.8 kilometers of fine golden sand. There, approximately 100 fishermen, organized in four cooperatives, worked on the wide beach in front of the town and left their boats stranded in the DGZF-636/01 concession, which they have kept and shared since 1994. It is 400 meters long and 20 meters wide, under a title in the name of the Punta La Ribera Cooperative.
Before Costa Palmas, the beach used to be the community's public plaza, that is, the meeting space par excellence, said the thesis of Carmina Valiente, a research professor at the Autonomous University of Baja California Sur.
Fishermen were the ones who made a more obvious occupation with the trellises, structures made of date palm leaves, where they took refuge from the heat on the seashore and filleted the fish after work at sea.
“The beach and the trellises were our second home. We were going to talk, to have a soda, some beers, to make some fish, to hang out with our friends. Now there is nothing, there is no fence on the beach, nor is there the large palapa that was there and that suddenly disappeared. Little by little they have been dismantling us,” Leal said.
10 years ago Leal had his own fence on the beach but when he fell and tried to lift it, the management of Zofemat de Los Cabos denied him this possibility. Thus, one by one, the branches disappeared.
There are still younger fishermen like Roberto Minjares, a member of the Pescadores del Cortés cooperative, who saw the beach open, it could be stranded and debared without any problem. However, that changed.
“The year 2006 marks a before and after in the history of the great transformation we have today,” said Reina Macklis, a resident of the community. Between 2006 and 2008, the company Desarrolladora La Ribera received environmental authorizations from Semarnat to build the nautical and residential megaproject known today as Costa Palmas, which included a beach club, a commercial area, a 57-hectare golf course, 300 hotel rooms, 800 condominium units and 945 residential lots.
The first thing they did was to fence off the 360-hectare plot of land and they only left access in the middle of the 3.2 kilometers of beachfront.
In 2008, they received authorizations for the construction of a residential nautical subdivision, navigation channels, shopping area, lots to the canal, service area, lots adjacent to the marina, beach club, oceanfront lots and two 200-meter breakwaters (north and south) for the access channel, which they modified with an extension of 157 meters to the north breakwater in 2018.
“From the beginning (the marina) was not well designed and was not properly evaluated. The sediment began to enter the navigation channels, it was flooded, it had to be dredged continuously and it was unsustainable in the long term,” said Sarahi Gómez, research coordinator at the Mexican Center for Environmental Law (Cemda).
Erosion and accretion are natural coastal processes, but these can be exacerbated by human activities. According to Enrique Nava, research professor at the Interdisciplinary Center for Marine Sciences of the National Polytechnic Institute, the infrastructures that generate the most impact in this regard are breakwaters and breakwaters.
Breakwaters are stone structures in the sea placed vertically or horizontally to deflect the impact of waves and protect ports. However, the big problem with these structures is that on one side they retain sediment and on the other side they favor erosion.
Another factor that accelerated the accretion and erosion of beaches was the channeling of Arroyo Santiago, which claimed its riverbed and caused havoc in neighboring areas of Costa Palmas, flooding golf courses, for example.
In 2018, the company received authorization from Semarnat to build two walls and confine the stream channel on both sides. The left side is about to be built, while the right side is 7.7 kilometers long with heights from 2.77 to five meters and was inaugurated in September 2023. From then on, the stream is confined and runs in a narrower channel than its natural channel.
The consequence of the confinement is that the sand it carried, which was previously distributed throughout the mouth of the stream, now only comes out through a narrow section of the beach, which forms a mound that, for the waves, is more difficult to move and distribute among all the beaches, explained Armando Trasviña Castro, principal researcher of the Center for Scientific Research and Higher Education of Ensenada, Unidad La Paz.
Pipeline works for the Santiago stream. Source: Daniela Reyes
The mouth of Arroyo Santiago after the rains in 2023. Courtesy: Armando Trasviña/Cicese La Paz
“The channeling work creates an alteration in the dynamics of sand transport along the coast of the coast and in addition the breakwater will retain the sediment that should supply the beaches to the south. It's like shooting yourself in the foot because that sand is what creates our beaches, and the beaches create the dune and the dune creates the protection of the coastline. This is precisely what should not be done in the rest of the state,” said Trasviña.
The diversion of the stream has exacerbated the impacts of breakwaters on beaches in the south. On the side where El Surgidero beach or central beach is located, there was erosion of the beach to the extent that it jeopardized the marina and the residences of the project.
“Sun and beach” tourism, an attractive feature of Costa Palmas, began to run out of the latter, so in 2020, the La Ribera Developer entered a project before Semarnat to rehabilitate and stabilize the beach area in front of Costa Palmas, and thus reduce eroded sites, as indicated by the Environmental Impact Demonstration.
This project was authorized in 2021 and consisted of the installation of seven sand islets and three breakwaters, three protective dams, and beach filling to cover the dikes and recover the width of the beach that previously existed.
“The impact (due to erosion) was too much and obviously the interests of the project were already at stake because they were completely losing the beach. This speaks of how the poor design of the project began to have consequences and led it to undertake rehabilitation actions, and that there was also no correct evaluation regarding the impacts and no adequate mitigation measures were established,” said Gómez.
He added that Desarrolladora La Ribera was reported to Profepa for starting rehabilitation works before obtaining authorization from Semarnat. However, the complaints did not succeed.
The two breakwaters that were built to stabilize the coastline, in the background the breakwaters that serve as entrances to the marina. Source: Daniela Reyes
For Valiente, Costa Palmas is a high-risk investment, which was planned on paper, but which has had difficulties to carry out, which has increased construction costs and thus the urgency to continue with the work at all costs.
Fishermen without a beach
The fishermen saw how the area in front of their concession grew slowly and took them away from the coast. With the dredging of the marina, its beaches went from being clean sand to being filled with rocks.
At the beginning of 2024, fishermen requested a dock for cooperatives and permit holders, which consisted of a water mirror with breakwaters and springs for stranding and debarring boats. During this process, they learned that the land gained from the sea in front of their concession and a new concession at the foot of the beach belonged to Desarrolladora La Ribera.
Map showing the concessions granted to the company Desarrolladora La Ribera and the Cooperativa Punta la Ribera. Source: Cemda.
In 2017, the General Directorate of Zofemat and Coastal Environments of Semarnat renewed the concession to the Punta La Ribera Fishing Cooperative with a 15-year term that covers an area of 7,986 square meters and 400 meters long. The use protected by the title is exclusive for fishing use, that is, for stranding and weeding vessels.
However, since 2005, the same institution has granted Desarrolladora La Ribera a concession of 142,000 square meters for the construction and operation of the marina, a breakwater and a pier, and another concession for 68,319 square meters that overlaps with the concession of the fishermen.
The use granted for the concession of the company that overlaps with that of the fishermen is for the exclusive use of protection, so only acts are allowed to keep the concessioned surface in its natural state.
“Not authorizing him to install any element, carry out any construction, carry out any activity or provide service of any kind,” the concession title indicated.
The fishermen reported that Costa Palmas has not respected the use of the concession, since it has filled in the area to avoid erosion and has placed tourist infrastructure, backed by Semarnat's authorizations for the rehabilitation and stabilization of the beach.
In addition, they pointed out that there cannot be two Zofemat concessions in the same area, one in front of the other.
“We have to analyze the conditions under which a concession was granted to Costa Palmas that is above the rights of the legitimate owners of the concession (in reference to fishermen) and users of a sector that has made historic use of the area. In addition, Costa Palmas, being the owner of that portion of the Zofemat, has also conditioned access to the area and that should not be the case,” said Gómez.
In 2016, representatives of Costa Palmas made an agreement with the fishermen of the Punta La Ribera Cooperative for the free use of the ramp in the marina, but the fishermen, at the expense of the agreement, fear that conditions will change at any time.
In addition, the agreement does not take into account fishermen from other cooperatives and free fishermen, so fishermen like Minjares go fishing from the only remaining access to the main beach or pay to use the marina. While others, not having a defined area, have left their lives at sea to start working, even in Costa Palmas.
“If we continue like this, the time will come when the practice of fishing will be forgotten. There are few of us who have. The issue of concessions and land gained from the sea by other companies has bankrupted us as fishermen,” said Minjares.
The inhabitants of La Ribera have been deprived of places that they had used historically and culturally and the fishermen have been displaced from their work space.
The loss of these environments also implies a violation of the right to a healthy environment, according to Gómez.
Fishermen from the community traveled to Mexico City to present their case to the headquarters of Semarnat on January 16 but have had no response. Meanwhile, Leal noted that the governor of Baja California Sur, Víctor Castro, has not responded to fishermen's requests for meetings since April 2024.
“We are a town made of fishermen forgotten by governments that always support development companies more than us,” said Minjares.
Above: Mario Leal with the offices handed over to the authorities. Bottom: From left to right are the fishermen José Reyes, Roberto Minjares, Francisco Romero and Pablo Romero. Source: Daniela Reyes
La Ribera's lesson for Baja California Sur
Resolving the situation of concessions and land gained from the sea must be the priority for local and federal governments, according to the fishermen of La Ribera, to guarantee the future of this public space.
Fishermen, like Leal, are hopeful that the issue of concessions will be resolved in their favor since they are optimistic about the actions of the new head of Semarnat, Alicia Bárcena, who has recently revoked environmental authorizations for projects close to La Ribera, such as Baja Bay and La Abundancia in Cabo Pulmo.
The researchers consulted for this report do not know what the outcome of the impacts of the marina, the stabilization works and the diversion of the stream will be, because these are processes that occur almost imperceptibly over time. However, they are certain that the most effective way to protect La Ribera and Baja California Sur is to prevent this from happening again.
“Costa Palmas is an example of everything that should not be done in a coastal tourism project. It was a project that was not viable for the area in the way in which it was planned, so it has generated an accumulation of environmental, economic and social effects. What the authority has to do is (...) to make an effective assessment of the environmental viability of projects and to establish the best mitigation measures because it is impossible to fully compensate for the damage when it has already been done,” said Gómez.
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