Imagine the hustle and bustle of downtown Miami, teeming with live music, filled with flavors of Latin American cuisine, aromas of Cuban coffee and tourists and locals alike enjoying miles of pristine white-sand beaches. A short distance to the south, lies the Biscayne Bay, which is home to several listed species under the most important wildlife conservation policy on the books, the Endangered Species Act, including manatees, crocodiles, several sea turtle species, small-tooth sawfish and staghorn coral (Acropora cervicornis). Just a couple miles down the road on U.S. Route 1, the heart of the coral reefs of South Florida, or the Florida Reef Tract can be found where it stretches 300 miles south to the Dry Tortugas National Park, making it the third largest barrier in the world. To the west of Miami, we find Everglades National Park, which is a designated World Heritage site with one of the most unique wetland ecosystems in the world. Everglades National Park is also one of the wettest regions in the United States, with many of its waterways finding their final destination in the Biscayne Bay, and ultimately into the Florida Reef Tract ecosystem, showing the interconnectedness of all of these South Florida ecosystems. These tropical coastal seascape ecosystems are characterized by seven connected ecosystems that include coastal strand, mangroves, seagrass beds, coral reefs, hard-bottom habitat, silt-bottom habitat and rocky-bottom habitat. Right in the middle of this mosaic of ecosystems lies the Port of Miami, nicknamed the “Gateway to the Americas” and “Cruise Capital of the World.” In this chapter we explore how major infrastructure projects may degrade delicate and imperiled coastal ecosystems despite strict federal, state and local laws, and how people and interest groups are working to protect these ecosystems.

The Dredging History of the Port of Miami

To meet the demands of the burgeoning market, the Port of Miami has undergone many dredging projects to accommodate larger shipping vessels and cruise ships throughout its history. Beginning in 1990, Congress authorized the deepening of the Port to 42 feet, which was completed in 1993. Since then, every 10 to 15 years, another port expansion dredging project has been implemented.

Methods

Case selection and research design

The proposed New Cruise Berthing Facility project in the Cayman Islands was selected as the case study for this research. This port infrastructure project was selected because, in the years following its announcement in 2013, an environmental dispute between two coalitions (over the potential economic benefits versus environmental impact) arose and continues to this day. Both coalitions ran sophisticated campaigns that pushed their policy beliefs to persuade the public and government to proceed with or cancel the project. The project's threat to adjacent coral reefs and an unprecedented outcome of an indefinite halt of the project, mobilized by the non-dominant coalition, make this case of special interest.

This research uses a critical case-study research design to gain in-depth and contextual insights into a complex and contemporary issue (Yin, 2018). This case qualifies as a critical case because understanding how coalitions are formed to contest infrastructure projects that threaten coral reefs is important for future environmental disputes and is not limited to coral reef conservation. A qualitative approach to content analysis is used, wherein the researchers collect document data from local newspapers to identify coalition properties and the occurrences of policy change and learning. The Advocacy Coalition Framework is used with deductive logic to thematically code and analyze data (Saldaña, 2016).

Data collection

A total of 420 news articles were collected as the data for this book. Articles were collected from two local newspapers: The Cayman News Service and the Cayman Compass. Newspaper sources were chosen because the port project overtook national headlines for seven years with stories running almost daily for weeks at a time between 2018 and 2019. The Cayman News Service and The Cayman Compass were chosen because they are the two prominent online local newspapers in the Cayman Islands. While many articles were neutral, the Cayman News Service emphasized the views of and expressed support for the anti-port coalition, while the Cayman Compass (to a lesser extent) supported the pro-port coalition. The earliest article was dated on June 8, 2015 and the latest on September 9, 2021. n = 308 articles exist under the tag “cruise dock facility” in the Cayman News Service, of which n = 283 were included.

Theoretical Framework

To best conceptualize the importance of cultural ecosystem services, and the values they hold for the people who rely on these ecosystems, we must clearly define some of the key terms outlined in our theoretical framework, derived from Fish et al., 2016. In this framework the fundamental building block for understanding how cultural ecosystem services and the benefits they provide work in tandem. It begins with the biophysical domain in which humans interact with their environment. The biophysical domain is defined as nature's condition and ecological functioning (independent of interactions with people/benefits/services). Stated simply, the biophysical domain provides the material components of the environmental spaces where these interactions take place. Additionally, the biophysical domain provides opportunities for the various cultural practices enabled by environmental spaces. The environmental spaces and cultural practices (described in further detail below) both work to shape the biophysical domain. In the Cayman Islands, the reefs in Georgetown Harbour being threatened or lost by the port expansion project are the biophysical domain and the environmental spaces being examined in this chapter.

Environmental spaces are defined as the physical locations or sites in which humans and the societies and cultures they populate, interact within the eco-system. This can include meadows, streams, mountain tops, and in the context of the Cayman Islands, the beaches and reefs surrounding the islands. These spaces provide a context for the linking of the biophysical domain with cultural practices and cultural ecosystem benefits, as these spaces shape the biophysical domain and enable cultural practices and benefits.

In the case of the Cayman Islands, a majority of the environmental spaces which provide these benefits are reefs, beaches, lagoons and other marine environments surrounding the islands. Popular locations around the three islands (Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac) include Eden Rock, Devil's Grotto, Macabuca, Cheeseburger Reef, Seven Mile Beach and the USS Kittiwake.

Methods

This study was distributed via an online platform (Google Forms) through the Cayman Islands National Trust which posted the link to the survey on their social media on November 1, 2019. The survey had n = 175 responses, which is a very small portion of the Caymanian population, but with information saturation on topics such as the form of reef access that Caymanian's prefer.

Methods

Data included meeting minutes (i.e., transcripts recorded during advisory council/committee meetings), news documents (including newspaper articles, press releases, newspaper blogs and news transcripts), and remote interviews with representatives and participating stakeholders from the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative and the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary. Using the appearance of mass coral bleaching events along the Florida Reef Tract as a temporal threshold, denoting a shift from historical to contemporary ecosystem functionality and management needs, I compiled a total of 1,122 individual data points (n = 1,122) from both organizations, FKNMS (n = 541) and SEFCRI (n = 581), throughout the summer of 2021.

News document data were collected from the Nexis Uni database, which initially revealed over 10,000 results when searching “Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary” or “Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative.” However, many of these results were irrelevant within the scope of this study; therefore, modifiers were added to narrow the search results. First, for the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary, 179 documents were isolated using the “News” filter and the Boolean search “Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary” AND “management.” These results were then filtered using the category “Newspapers” and the date range “1996 - present.” The reason I focused on newspaper articles was to make the amount of FKNMS news data more manageable. Additionally, 1996 was selected as a starting point because the first mass bleaching event to occur in Florida after the creation of the FKNMS was in 1997. Of the 179 results, 79 were deemed relevant to this study, and 100 were excluded. The results were manually sorted to determine their relevance to this research. Any articles that were outside the scope of this study were therefore excluded. For example, one article focused on new funding for habitat restoration in the Everglades National Park and mentioned both the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary and “management” in that context. However, this had no direct relevance to the management of the Florida Reef Tract (Wadlow, 2010).

Second, for the Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative, 99 results were isolated using the “News” filter and the Boolean search “Southeast Florida Coral Reef Initiative” OR “SEFCRI” OR “Ecosystem Conservation Area.” Because SEFCRI is a newer organization (established in 2003), there was no need to limit the date range.

Methods

Case selection

The 2015 Port of Miami dredging project in Florida, United States, was the selected case study for this research. An environmental dispute emerged due to the organization of local stakeholders who were concerned over the uncertainty over ecological impacts of these projects on reefs. The project took place in Miami, which is a popular destination in the tropics, whose economy is strongly tied to trade and the tourism industry. Furthermore, the port project takes place in a wealthy location based on gross domestic products and has institutions and resources that allow for coalitions to emerge. We apply the Narrative Policy Framework as the theoretical lens to assess how narrative strategies were used to influence policy outcomes regarding these port projects.

Research design

The case study is the research design for this study, and it is appropriate because it allows the researcher an in-depth investigation to answer why and how decisions were made, examines contemporary events over which the researcher has no control over and enables multiple sources of data to converge toward an explanation (Yin, 2018). The project specifically uses a case-study design and mixed methods to provide more rigorous and robust findings (Creswell & Clark, 2019; Johnson et al., 2007; Yin, 2018). Mixed methods research is when a researcher combines qualitative and quantitative elements of research methods and integrates multiple forms of data (Creswell & Clark, 2019). We collected document and interview data from local stakeholders involved in the port project to identify the narrative strategies that were employed.

Data collection

For the Port of Miami case study, data were collected from four sources: the Nexis Uni database, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), Jacksonville District news archive, the Miami WaterKeeper press and blog archive, and the World Access News database. A total of n = 103 documents were collected, which consisted of news releases, articles and position statements. Using the search terms “Miami” and “Deep Dredge Project” between 2010 and 2020 in Nexis Uni resulted in n = 65 documents. This date range was chosen because political leaders announced the start of the deep dredge project in 2010, and even though the project was completed in 2015, coral mortality reports and papers were published from 2016 to 2019.

Research Methods

Research design

This case study uses an exploratory sequential research design, where qualitative data is collected first, followed by quantitative analysis to further our understanding of qualitative results (Yin, 2009). The purpose behind exploratory sequential-design studies is that the qualitative findings can inform the quantitative model and in our case become a new theoretical framework for why lawmakers support coral conservation policy (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018). We used qualitative methods to characterize the messages and themes that political entrepreneurs used to describe their rationale for supporting bipartisan coral reef conservation bills. Quantitative analysis of these statements examines (1) whether there were significant differences between Republicans and Democrats over the ways they framed the problem; and (2) whether support for these bills (i.e., co-sponsorship and “yea” roll-call votes) could be predicted by representatives’ jurisdictions being located in coastal zones and/or adjacent to coral reefs. Roll-call votes occur when a representative or senator votes “yea” or “nay,” so that the names of members voting on each side are recorded, compared to voice votes which do not record the stance taken by individual members (U.S. Senate, 2021). Thus, the qualitative findings (how lawmakers defined the problem) informs the quantitative analysis (differences in message content across political parties and spatial/political party variables of interest). We added the spatial variables after recognizing that a compelling alternative explanation for support for coral reef legislation may come from the fact that congressional political entrepreneurs may live next to and therefore care more about coral reef ecosystems, regardless of political party or long-term political ideology. Overall, we are theorizing why lawmakers cross party lines to support conservation legislation for climate-vulnerable ecosystems. Understanding this rationale may help enact future bipartisan climate policy.

Qualitative sampling logic

To understand how policy entrepreneurs and political entrepreneurs discussed their rationale for supporting these bills (a process that we conceptualize as “defining the problem in the problem stream”), we collected all statements made on The Restoring Resilient Reefs Act, the Tropical Forest and Coral Reef Conservation Reauthorization Act, and the Offshore Wind for Territories Act. Statements were collected from the Nexis Uni Database, Congressional Record archive on congress .go v, and on the social media platform Twitter for statements made by relevant legislators, NGOs and other members of civil society.