Municipal Integrated Coastal Management Facilitation in Latvia: Piloting Public Multi-Thematical Monitoring

Abstract

This paper contains a pilot study on coastal values and potential means of determining and characterising them in the terms of coastal planning and management. The research case study took place in the coastal region of North East Latvia – in the municipality of Salacgriva. The municipality coast is very diverse: coastal access, landscape and the whole biogeography is changing very much along the whole 54 km, being also rich in various natural and cultural heritage assets. Such great coastal variety in the limits of one administrative territory does require very selective governance approaches and dynamic management to be realized by local administration, which has very limited necessary capacities of all type, alike other rural coastal municipalities in Latvia. Also, there is very limited coastal information as well as assessment/interpretation capacities. All this requires mandatory development of municipal coastal monitoring and information/science-policy interface, to be based on general System Analysis Framework (SAF) application, first, on social-ecological system approach, and, second, including necessary developments of stakeholder participation and bottom-up governance approaches and, at the first, developing of the public monitoring (citizen science approach, e.g., Eco schools alike public representatives, etc.) capacities and methodologies. There has been developed an initial proposal for a new and multi-thematic coastal core area monitoring and governance tool. Coastal resources were assessed using a coastal value-based prioritisation tool, which generates knowledge of the mutual connection among various social-ecological resources/assets along the shore. During the study, data was collected along the municipal coastline taking into account the elements characterising the beach and shoreline landscape, as well as the distribution of invasive plant species, algae and plants washed up by the sea, as well as waste created by people along the coast. This data was subsequently collated, described, and combined with separate conclusions made based on beach visitors’ interviews that were conducted along the entire Latvian coast as well as interviews of the Salacgriva municipality’s main stakeholder groups. Information was also obtained from the analysis of documents seeking to facilitate development of a multi-thematic coastal value prioritisation tool and to distinguish coastal management priorities that can be set as proposals to coastal governments for developing a sustainable and more integrated coastal management background.