A Geoethical approach to the governance of socioecological systems: The case of the Delta de la Tordera

This paper presents the geoethical dilemma of the coastal zone of the Tordera Delta as a case study with the objective of showing the contribution of geoethics to the governance of coastal social-ecological systems. The Tordera Delta, located in the southern Costa Brava, Catalonia, constitutes a social-ecological system that suffers from intense anthropization mainly due to tourist pressures on the coast. The massive tourism of “sun and beach”, although it brought human well-being and economic development to the region, has caused a heavy urbanization of the coastline that altered the coastal dynamics, eroded its beaches and degraded many ecosystem services, something that is aggravated today by the climate change events in terms of rising sea level as well as the magnitude of the storms (“llevantades”), typical of the Western Mediterranean coast. Posing the problem of governance in terms of a geoethical dilemma means discerning among the values that refer to the intrinsic meaning of coastal landscapes and much more instrumental values that see beaches as goods (commodities) for tourism uses. Finally, the paper reflects if there is a way to overcome this dichotomy of values by briefly considering meaning values as elements that forge cultural identities as further research.