Despite ecosystem health and the services they provide being crucial for the industry, they not always considered sufficiently in tourism development plans and policies. Therefore, ADAPTUR assigned one Technical Adviser to the Ministry of Tourism (SECTUR) and another one to the Ministry of Environment (SEMARNAT) to worked closely together and established cooperation structures which allowed to integrate aspects of biodiversity and climate change into national legislation.

One important result was the new Tourism Programme 2020-2024 PROSECTUR, which represents a major milestone in Mexico´s ambitions to fulfil its Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC) and to integrate ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) into its sector plans. On the subnational level, one Regional Technical Adviser was also assigned to each of its three project destinations to provide permanent facilitation of local cooperation processes.

By doing this, several subnational policies and development plans which integrate EbA have been developed (e.g., Municipal Climate Plan Puerto Vallarta, Municipal Climate Plan Bahía de Banderas, Urban Development Plan San Miguel de Allende). Recently, policy proposals made by the Congress of Quintana Roo, and the initiative to mainstream the NDC and PROSECTUR goals in sub-national tourism policies have started.

The first step towards the development of a target group specific communication and capacity building strategy was a KAP analysis (knowledge, attitude, practices), which established a baseline, in terms of understanding the private sector´s knowledge about climate change, as well as its attitude towards the topic and the practices already in place. The analysis also included a capacity needs assessment, which served as input for ADAPTUR´s capacity building and training program. The findings were also used to train counterparts, consultants, and project members in better understanding the private sector and to improve their communication skills by using the right words, concepts and messages.

The training program comprised several topics about climate change vulnerability, climate-proof investment, cost-benefit analysis, national/subnational policies related to climate change, EbA solutions, public-private cooperation, financial mechanism, etc.

At the same time, a press campaign was launched in cooperation with local media and journalists. The ADAPTUR website was introduced with regular newsletters, best-practices, case studies and messages from industry leaders. It also contained a resources section with studies, tools and information material.