**Abstract**

The 160 km of the Riviera Maya from Cancun to Tulum are highly valued by investors in the tourism sector. In the case of the city of Tulum, the problem is more acute due to hydrometeorological risks and effects on the environment, such as mangroves and underground rivers. The development of basic urban infrastructure (water, sanitation, and solid waste) for the resident population does not allow the development of large tourism real estate projects that are the site of several controversies between environmentalists, landowners, the municipality itself and the investors. The existence of a Tulum National Park and the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve put a brake on massive tourism development, but they are nevertheless affected. The methodology of analysis is based on a comparison between the risk maps and the municipal development plans, which reveals little interest in potential risks. Faced with this problem, the research proposes sustainable development and participatory risk management that will not affect the environment, including nature-friendly tourism development.

**Keywords:** risks, threats, urban development, tourism, investors

### **1. Introduction**

The Municipality of Tulum was founded on March 13, 2008, from the territory of the municipality of solidaridad and is part of the Chichen-Itza-Coba-Tulum archaeological axis. It is located on the Mayan coast south of Cancun (132 km) and is part of the Cancun-Tulum tourist corridor. The geographical context of Tulum has long beaches and is situated in front of the largest chain of reefs in the world, wide extensions of mangroves, and surrounded by a jungle of great biodiversity, as well as numerous cenotes and caverns that are part of a system of underground rivers, in the northern and southern part of the urban area.

The city of Tulum is now facing pressure from the tourist real estate market, and its negative effects, such as real estate and urban speculation on communal land and environmental effects, such as sanitary landfills at the top of their capacity. There is also an environmental deterioration of hydrological systems, wetlands, coastal dunes, and coral reefs and insufficient infrastructure making the city vulnerable to all kinds of threats. In the year 2000, the Riviera Maya megaproject emerged,

including Ciudad del Carmen and Tulum. The Rivera Maya was planned as a tourism megaproject for mass tourism without considering the effects, and it could have on the environment along the coast of Quintana Roo. The development of the City of Tulum should be limited by the Tulum National Park, founded in 1981, where the archaeological site (664 hectares) is located, and the Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve, both of which are considered natural protected areas (PNA). The Sian Ka'an Biosphere Reserve is part of the hydrological complex of lagoons, wetlands, underground rivers, and cenotes of the Mesoamerican Reef System and is located 10 kilometers south of Tulum and has an area of 528,147 hectares (ha). On January 20th, 1986, it was declared a biosphere reserve, as a World Heritage Site, by UNESCO. These wetlands form a natural barrier to weather disturbances, such as hurricanes, waves, and storm surges. The existence of these protected areas has done little to limit the expansion of tourist and housing developments in these areas. However, the areas that remain between the city itself and the coast are becoming real estate developments, such as Aldea Zama, despite occupying mangroves, gradually disappearing from the jungle.

The existence of ejido land around the city of Tulum, regulated by the urban development plan (2006–2030), predisposes future growth [1, 2]. These ejido lands are subject of high real estate speculation despite being jungle land. There are more than 14 tourist developments in Tulum National Park.

There is a conflict between the local authorities that approved an update to 2006 and urban development plan that proposed the construction of 60,000 hotel rooms within 25 years and the federal authorities demanding that the urban development plan conform to the legal framework without encroaching on federal powers. This urban development plan, updated in April 2008, was revoked in May 2008 by the supreme court of justice of the nation (SCJN) for invading the powers of the central state in the management and protection of natural protected areas and the Tulum National Park, thereby which the municipality of Tulum will not be able to assign population densities or assign land uses to the protected area, as it intended.

There are also conflicts between environmental groups, environmental NGOs, federal institutions and, on the other hand, local politicians, ejido owners, large international corporations, and private investors. The first conflict consists of a legal dispute over land ownership between the former owners and those requesting recognition of the expropriated territory for the national park and the archaeological zone.

There are several works about the environmental problems in Tulum and on the Mayan coast, most of them pose problems linked to tourism González [3–5], the coastal environment [6], urban resilience to hurricanes Camacho Sanabria José [7], effects of climate change on the coastal zones [8, 9], but few associate hydrometeorological risks with urban development caused by the growth of tourism.

The environmental problem manifests itself around four main axes:


*Risks and Threats on the Coast of Quintana Roo: The Case of Tulum, México DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.107452*


These risks and threats are not contemplated in urban development plans, much less in city growth plans. It seems that the growth plans are unaware of these risks when they have been highlighted by various studies. The conceptual framework below explains in some way why these risks and threats have not been considered in the city's growth plans.

### **2. Conceptual framework**

The conceptual framework is based on the following research questions: How are risks and vulnerability constructed in a coastal city? and How do risks and vulnerability grow over the years? To begin with, the importance of vulnerability is recognized, followed by risks and their social construction as central concepts in the occurrence of disasters that are by no means natural [11, 12]. Urban disasters are processes, sometimes long with multi-causal, social, economic, and political factors, particularly in cities like Tulum, which began to grow in the 1990s. This growth process illustrates how risk has been built over the last 30 years. Natural threats have not changed in this same period hurricanes, floods, permeable karstic soil, etc. What has changed is the occupation of the territory mainly due to pressure from the tourism industry. The social construction of risks has its origin in the creation of vulnerable conditions, for example, the construction of housing complexes on mangroves that thus disappear, and that are a natural barrier against the effect of hurricanes and limiting flooding.

Currently, new concepts are used by various researchers, such as adaptation and resilience. Although adaptation processes have always existed since the beginning of humanity, now it is about adaptation processes in the face of climate change that are promoted by international organizations. Likewise, several studies focus on "urban resilience", studying whether a city is resilient or not, these concepts may help to understand the phenomena but do not help to propose solutions to limit the vulnerability of cities to natural phenomena and socio-natural threats.

### **3. Methodology**

An observation period of the municipality of Tulum goes between 1987 and 2020, corresponding to the data obtained in relation to urban and population growth between these dates. The analysis is developed from cartography prepared by the urban development plan (2006), the municipal development plan (2018-2021) and the municipal risk atlas (2015), and the partial program of urban development polygon south of the Tulum population center (2011). The proposal results from a

comparison and superimposition layer of risk maps and urban growth and development maps carried out both by state and municipal authorities, as well as the private sector and tourism infrastructure promoters. Neither the municipal authorities nor the promoters of tourist infrastructures do this map crossing, if they had done so, their proposals in flood zones would be invalidated and unmarketable. For example, the flood zones marked in red in the risk atlas of Tulum do not appear in the urban development plans that have subdivided all the land around the urban center of Tulum. The mangrove areas located between the urban center and the coast have also been subdivided. Underground rivers no longer appear in the urban development plan. This method has aimed to highlight these omissions that leave the developer companies a free field for their projects without any restrictions other than those of the construction regulations.
