Coastal Zone Management Act at 30 years: the ideal, the practical, and the practice in the United States, Canada, and Oceania

Abstract

In 1972, the Congress of the United States produced a statute entitled the Coastal Zone Management Act. This act was an output of the most prolific period of federal environmental lawmaking in the history of the United States. Like other environmental laws of the time, it was driven by the social and political pressures arising from reaction to the degradation of the natural environment. The legal, institutional, and operational contexts of this law made it unique among these statutes in a number of key ways. Of all the federal environmental laws in the United States, it is the one that is most reliant upon the will of individual states to accomplish its primary goals: the protection of fragile coastal environments from the ravages of modern civilization while still allowing for use and enjoyment of these same resources. Today, more than 98% of the Coastal Zone of the United States is under some level of management under this Act. During this same period of 40 years, the number of people living in the Coastal Zone has greatly expanded to the point where over 52% of the total population of the country now lives in this 10% of the total land area. This paper will examine the history of the CZMA, its successes, failures, and ongoing challenges and the expansion of the concepts embodied in the act to several other countries, including Australia, New Zealand, and Canada.