Integrated Coastal Management: lessons learned to address new challenges

Abstract

In 1969, the Stratton Commission presented to the US Congress a keystone report in the field of coastal management, which eventually culminated in the US Coastal ZoneManagement Act of 1973 that marked commencement of coastal management programmes in the USA. Since then the subject has gone global and now is being sub-summed into the area of Marine Spatial Planning. The Rio summit in 1992 provided a large impetus for Mediterranean regions and in 1995, the revised Barcelona Convention introduced the second phase of the Mediterranean Action Plan, to be followed 1 year later by the European Union funded Demonstration Programme on Integrated Coastal Zone Management. The end result of the above has been a plethora of global research activities from which many tools and instruments varying from simple to extremely sophisticated, have evolved together with approaches, such as, ‘community/ecosystem based’, ‘satoumi,’ etc. A Global Congress on: ‘Integrated Coastal Management (ICM):Lessons learned to address new challenges,’ was held at Marmaris, Turkey, In November, 2013, organised by the Medcoast Coastal Foundation, Dalyan, Turkey and the International EMECSCentre, Kobe, Japan, co-organised with Sitki Kocman University, Mugla, Turkey. EU Projects PEGASO and MARLISCO contributed considerably to the outcome of the 186 papers presented and published. From these ten were selected for this Special Issue of the Journal of Coastal Conservation andManagement and the topics were completely rewritten to a much greater depth. The main focus is the Mediterranean and Black Seas, but three ‘outliers’ have been included, e.g. Kate Pike et al., investigated cultural ecosystem services in Canada and the UK using Q methodology to examine ‘unmeasurable’ values, converting qualitative, subjective data to quantitative information; whilst Peter Lawless gave three New Zealand case studies of sociometric and structural analyses utilised for local level consensus that could be transposed into regional and national administrative systems. A keynote presentation by Frank van der Meulen et al., concerned dune compensation issues in the Netherlands and its implications for dune areas elsewhere in the world. Gonzalo C. Malvarez, Emilia G. Pintado, Fatima Navas & Alessandro Giordano set the scene by looking at, ‘Spatial data and its importance for the implementation of UNEP MAP ICZM Protocols for the Mediterranean.’ One of the key elements of work carried out via the European Commission, Framework Programme 7, 2010, PEGASO project, was Spatial Data Infrastructure (SDI) development together with sustainability multiscale integrated assessments tools. The aim was to produce a model of Mediterranean and Black Sea regions that integrated data from different formats. Continuing with tools needed in ICM, Mamuka Gvilava, Tamar Bakuradze & Amiran Gigineishvili’s, ‘Easy to Use Tools for ICZM Progress Reporting and Coastal Indicators,’ looked at how Black Sea countries utilised EU ICM indicators, and particularly stressed software issues. The Georgian coast was used as an example of the application of spectrum-type visualisation to coastal issues to derive coastal sustainability indicators and recommendation were made. The environmental management modelling theme was carried on by the paper of Peter Lawless; ‘Application of SociometricMethods to Collaborative CoastalManagement.’ Three New Zealand case studies were analysed in a sociometric framework from pre-initiation research to completed * Allan T. Williams allan.williams@virgin.net