Managing coastal protection through multi-scale governance structures in Romania

Abstract

The coastal zone offers many goods and services ranging from production to recreation and protection. During the last half century, human interventions on the Romanian Black Sea coast have abruptly changed the natural trends of coastal evolution, increasing erosion rates on many coastal sectors and transforming the natural landscape with major impact on coastal ecosystems. This required decision makers to develop effective coastal and marine conservation regulations and programs. This paper uses Evolutionary Governance Theory (EGT) as a conceptual framework to examine the currently emerging governance issues, due to the growing pressure from increasingly diverse human activities coupled with climate change impacts, that threaten the functional integrity of the coastal ecosystems. A proper evaluation and understanding of the policy framework helped us to identify the prerequisites for participative management. Results indicate that the legislation is sectorial, the competences are overlapping and the responsibilities are scattered. The analysis shows that policies related to governance of coastal and marine resources are not well synchronized and they signal an important gap in policy. Input from stakeholders helps us to understand some of the failures that are not present in the literature, since most of them occur at the local level.