Coastal Management Approach Research Articles

Scenario-based stakeholder engagement: Incorporating stakeholders preferences into coastal planning for climate change

Climate change poses many challenges for ecosystem and resource management. In particular, coastal planners are struggling to find ways to prepare for the potential impacts of future climate change while dealing with immediate pressures. Decisions on how to respond to future risks are complicated by the long time horizons and the uncertainty associated with the distribution of impacts. Existing coastal zone management approaches in the UK either do not adequately incorporate changing stakeholder preferences, or effectively ensure that stakeholders are aware of the trade-offs inherent in any coastal management decision. Using a novel method, scenario-based stakeholder engagement, which brings together stakeholder analysis, climate change management scenarios and deliberative techniques, the necessary trade-offs associated with long term coastal planning are explored. The method is applied to two case studies of coastal planning in Christchurch Bay on the south coast of England and the Orkney Islands off the north coast of Scotland. A range of conflicting preferences exist on the ideal governance structure to manage the coast under different climate change scenarios. In addition, the results show that public understanding of the trade-offs that have to be made is critical in gaining some degree of public support for long term coastal decision-making. We conclude that scenario-based stakeholder engagement is a useful tool to facilitate coastal management planning that takes into account the complexities and challenges of climate change, and could be used in conjunction with existing approaches such as the Shoreline Management Planning process.

Spatial Planning of Shrimp Farming in the Patos Lagoon Estuary (Southern Brazil): An Integrated Coastal Management Approach

In recent years, aquaculture has been growing all over the world. In the estuarine region of Patos Lagoon (southern Brazil), small pilot shrimp farms are being developed by the Mariculture Laboratory at the FURG. Despite its current growth, environmental information on the appropriate places for its development and expansion is lacking, making it a high-risk activity. In this study, GIS tools are used to identify the most appropriate aquatic sites for small shrimp farms and present a methodological approach for the spatial planning of aquaculture in the Patos Lagoon Estuary. The main criteria taken into account are accessibility, proximity of fishing villages, distance from pollution sources, salinity, bathymetry and legal constraints. An integrated analysis of these parameters using spatial analysis techniques is carried out. This powerful method brings together a variety of data for decision-making in aquaculture. The result is a continuous surface ranging from the least suitable to the most suitable places for shrimp farming. This information will be useful in the decision-making process for guiding aquaculture planning and informing stakeholders in order to appropriately develop and manage the coast in this area.

Coastal zone management focusing on coastal tourism in a transitional period of China

Coastal zone management in China has undergone a developmental leap since 1978, a turning point in the country's economic and institutional reform. In examining China's reform in coastal management, this paper assesses the evolution of marine activities including coastal tourism. It also looks into the present issues of coastal resource uses and how administrative agencies responded to those coastal resource issues especially as the country moves from a planned economy to a market economy, and from centralized governance to decentralized governance. This paper also proposes a management approach for coastal tourism management in the future of China.

Effects of tropical open-water seaweed farming on seagrass ecosystem structure and function

Seaweed farming is often depicted as a sustainable form of aquaculture, but suspected habitat alterations and spread of algae outside farms have rendered speculations on the actual degree of sustainability. We conducted an experimental field study on Unguja Island (Zanzibar, Tan- zania) to investigate the effects of off-bottom seaweed farming on a tropical seagrass ecosystem, using 1.5 × 2.5 m experimental farm plots. After 11 wk, above-ground seagrass biomass was 40% lower than in control plots, owing to a combination of lower shoot density, shoot length and leaf growth rate. Since the biomass was constant between Day 15 and 75 in the farm (F) treatment, but increased by 67 vs. 48% in the 2 controls (control treatment (C) and stick-and-line control treatment (CSL)), the effect exerted by the farm was a lack of potential biomass increase rather than an actual decrease. The effect was transplanted to associated organisms both in terms of lower seagrass epi- phyte cover and changes in the abundance of 2 dominating epifauna taxa (>1 cm): sea urchins and sponges. Furthermore, the F treatment caused an accumulation of seagrass leaf litter, but did not affect sediment organic matter (SOM) content. The mechanisms behind these effects were not explic- itly tested, but algal shading, emergence stress and mechanical abrasion were identified as likely contributors. Interestingly, the effects were largely restricted to 1 of the 2 seagrass species present, Enhalus acoroides, while the other, Thalassia hemprichii, remained more or less unaffected. This may be due to reduced interspecific competition or species-specific differences in morphology and stress tolerance, and could in the long-term have implications for (amongst others) associated fish commu- nities. Although seaweed farming at the current level is less detrimental than, for example, intensive shrimp farming, and therefore should be seen as a strong option for future aquaculture develop- ments, intensive farming on seagrasses should be avoided or at least minimized by, for example, implementing other farming methods. The risk of ecosystem-level changes in large-scale and uncon- trolled farm enterprises warrants a holistic and integrated coastal management approach which considers all aspects of the tropical seascape including human societies and natural resource use.

Recent human‐induced salinity changes in Ramsar‐listed Orielton Lagoon, south‐east Tasmania, Australia: a new approach for coastal lagoon conservation and management

Abstract Many coastal lagoons in eastern Australia have changed as a result of recent human activities. However, it is often difficult to determine the extent of change and the ecological implications. A palaeoecological approach allows a quantitative assessment of how an aquatic ecosystem changes and responds to human impacts beyond what is possible with historical data or monitoring programmes. Orielton Lagoon (south‐east Tasmania, Australia) is a Ramsar‐listed coastal wetland of international importance for conservation. This study was undertaken at the site to determine whether recent anthropogenic hydrological modifications to the lagoon had influenced its ecology, particularly salinity, and compromised its Ramsar status. A diatom–salinity transfer function was constructed from a training data set of 96 diatom taxa from 34 sampling sites in 19 lagoons along the east coast of Tasmania. The salinity of Orielton Lagoon has changed in response to a causeway constructed across its mouth, which has transformed the lagoon from an open marine environment to an enclosed, virtually stagnant, brackish water body. These changes have compromised the protected coastal wetland status of Orielton Lagoon. Environmental remediation attempts have since partially restored the natural hydrology of the lagoon and it is now returning towards the state it was in prior to causeway construction. A palaeoecological approach using diatoms was found to be successful in reconstructing recent salinity changes and investigating human impacts on Orielton Lagoon over the last 50–55 years. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Coastal Sustainability—An Elusive Pursuit?: Reflections on South Africa's Coastal Policy Experience

Sustainability is an elusive pursuit. But coastal poverty is a pervasive and debilitating reality for many coastal communities and the coastal management literature provides little explicit direction for tackling poverty. How then can a more people-centred, pro-poor Integrated Coastal Management approach be developed and implemented? The Sustainable Livelihoods approach provides a complementary analytical framework for understanding the nature of poverty and the challenges and opportunities for building sustainable coastal livelihoods. This approach has guided aspects of South Africa's coastal policy implementation effort. This experience exposes significant challenges that must be faced in converting sustainability rhetoric into practical reality and reveals lessons for confronting the underlying drivers of coastal poverty. Ultimately, a people-centred, pro-poor approach must empower poor coastal communities to pursue the mercurial ideal of coastal sustainability through practical, locally relevant interventions.

The Wadden Sea protection and management scheme—towards an integrated coastal management approach?

The Wadden Sea is Europe's largest and most important marine wetland, a marine area of outstanding international importance shared by Denmark, Germany and The Netherlands. Nowhere else in the world is there an area on a similar scale and multifaceted which contains such a complex of tidal flats, gullies salt marshes, dunes and islands. The Wadden Sea is now subject to a comprehensive nature protection scheme on the national and regional level as well as to extensive protection and management arrangements between the countries in the framework of the Trilateral Wadden Sea Cooperation. Central elements of the trilateral arrangements are the guiding principles, common management principles and the common targets upon which common policies and management have been agreed on. There has been a gradual shift in the management issues of the Wadden Sea from addressing the problems within the area to an acknowledgement of the importance of managing the Wadden Sea in a larger coastal context and addressing the relationship issues. The European Union ICZM program has particularly advanced the discussions. The Wadden Sea conservation and management scheme is based on an ecosystem approach which aims at preserving the integrity and functioning of the system and allows for a sustainable use of the area within that framework. It is perceived mainly as an environmental issue, whereas the social and economic developments in the coastal zone are equally a part of the sustainable development concept. Therefore, a stakeholder forum, the Wadden Sea Forum, has been established in an attempt to implement a sustainability concept to support the development of new social and economic perspectives for the region. This approach is also important with a view to maintain the support for a sound management of the coastal zone. Sustainable development is a key concept in a strategic approach to integrated coastal zone management.

A methodological approach to be used in integrated coastal zone management processes: the case of the Catalan Coast (Catalonia, Spain)

Since early 1999, we have been working on an environmental information system as a preliminary phase to develop the National Strategy of the Catalan Coast. Using the tourism industry as the main pressuring driver and the municipality as the territorial unit, we have compiled a vast amount of information that has been converted into an information platform for the general public, politicians, and public administrators. Working in close co-operation with the planning authorities of the Generalitat of Catalonia, we developed decision support tools as a methodological approach for coastal management. The decision support system is composed by: (a) the development of an environmental indicator-based report; (b) the use of a geographical information system (GIS); and (c) the incorporation of different types of graphical packages. These tools have been applied to the 70 municipalities of the Catalan Coast and a specific development of the system was carried out in the region of La Selva, municipalities of Blanes, Lloret de Mar, and Tossa de Mar (southern Costa Brava, Girona). The system has been designed to help coastal managers in Catalonia, and it is thought to be used in the process of developing the National Strategy for Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) of the Catalan Coast following the EC Recommendation (COM/00/545).

The Theory and Practice of Coastal Area Planning: Linking Strategic Planning to Local Communities

Integrated coastal management (ICM) has been slowly accepted over the last decade as a unifying approach for coastal planning and management throughout the world. Coastal planning aimed at achieving the objectives of ICM can be implemented by varying processes and faces many challenges. One major challenge for coastal planning is to adapt the well-developed theoretical principles of ICM to practical and understandable outcomes in local areas. Associated with this challenge is the need to balance coastal planning objectives for conservation and economic development of a nation or state/province with the objectives of the local community. This article describes a three-tiered approach to coastal planning in Victoria, Australia, which will be of value to other countries, particularly those with subnational coastal planning jurisdictions. This approach not only has the aim of balancing subnational (e.g., state government) and local objectives, but also of applying the theoretical concept of ICM in practice on the ground. In addition, the approach sets out to achieve a sense of ownership of the planning process by local communities by maximizing their involvement at all levels of planning and also by making the state strategy as easy to understand and follow as possible.

The coastal cultural heritage facing coastal management

This paper is concerned with the role of cultural heritage in coastal areas, including land belts and coastal marine waters in the prospect of operating sustainable development-aimed strategies. It is a part of the investigations carried out in the framework of the Progetto Finalizzato Beni Culturali (Special Project Safeguard of Cultural Heritage) convened by the Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR, the Italian National Research Council). Essentially, it aims at contributing to the discussion on how the mise-en-valeur of the coastal cultural heritage may be framed within integrated coastal management programmes. In this view, the discourse on the coastal cultural heritage runs along this pathway: (i) global (climatic) change and globalisation are assumed to be the key components of the external environment with which the coastal area interacts; (ii) the conceptual framework of coastal management, as it can be deduced by the background guidelines from Agenda 21 (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED), is considered; (iii) the legal framework, which the coastal area is characterised by, is taken into account by focusing on its implications on the management patterns. At this point, attention is concentrated on the role of cultural heritage in the framework of integrated coastal management approaches. It is considered, how this pivotal component of the coastal area has been dealt with bythe intergovernmental organisations. Special consideration is attributed to the European Code of Conduct for Coastal Management Zones, since it considers the ecological patrimony and cultural heritage as giving shape to a unique ethically-endowed reality, which materialised through landscapes and seascapes. The final step consists of the design of a tentative Code of Conduct for Coastal Cultural Heritage consisting of some background and operational principles.

Analytical perspectives of cooperative coastal management

We accept the thesis that coastal management, as any other form of environmental management, can be effective only with the cooperation of a multitude of stakeholders with conflicting interests. At present, cooperation is forced upon stakeholders by a paternalistic (top-down) coastal management that is outcome oriented and coercive in nature. Forced cooperation is difficult to maintain, however. The alternative is to seek voluntary cooperation with a process-oriented, cooperative (bottom-up) coastal management approach. After a brief review of these arguments, we address the major analytical challenge of cooperative coastal management, which is to search for solutions that can be negotiated and implemented with maximum voluntary cooperation. The main property of these solutions, which are also referred to as core solutions, is that they are preferable to individual stakeholders or coalitions of stakeholders over acting-alone alternatives. Our analysis is applicable to any other form of environmental management.

SCIENTIFIC CHARACTERIZATION AND MONITORING: ITS APPLICATION TO INTEGRATED COASTAL MANAGEMENT IN MALAYSIA

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is assisting Asian region member nations to develop and implement coastal management approaches to improve fisheries resources. Approaches are adapted to specific geographic, political, and cultural needs of each member nation. In Malaysia, the Department of Fisheries Malaysia, FAO, and the Bay of Bengal Program have been working together in the design and implementation of a Special Area Management (SAM) approach to address the issues facing the Pulau Payar Marine Park along the west coast of Malaysia. Early results of the scientific work have assisted in achieving the SAM project objectives. For example, science applied in the project helped participants to view the issues objectively, to gauge the effectiveness of past management actions, and to guide decisions on future actions. Important success stories of the SAM project discussed in the paper include: (1) Pulau Payar Marine Park appears to be succeeding at what it set out to do (i.e., sustain or enhance fisheries productivity); (2) “unmanaged tourism” seems to have greater adverse impact than previous fisheries practices; (3) it is possible to identify and promote tourist activities that reduce or eliminate harm to coral reefs; (4) the ground has been laid to tackle the infrastructure and development-related issues identified through the multi-sectoral SAM process as having major impacts on both water quality and coral reefs; and (5) multi-sectoral and scientific input can be successfully sought and incorporated to identify issues for management attention and decision making.

Catalyzing Coastal Management in Kenya and Zanzibar: Building Capacity and Commitment

Site-based projects were initiated in Chawka Bay-Paje, Zanzibar, and Nyali-Bamburi-Shanzu, Kenya, to demonstrate the benefits of an integrated coastal management (ICM) approach for addressing coastal issues such as tourism development and enhancement of resource-dependent village economies in eastern Africa. A two-year, multidonor project used three primary strategies to make rapid, but sustainable, progress toward ICM. These included using interagency government teams for ICM planning, adopting an internationally recognized framework for ICM as a project ''road map,'' and explicitly incorporating capacity-building strategies into all aspects of the project. Within two years, integrated ICM action strategies, prepared through participatory processes, were being implemented at both sites, and both teams were working to expand the scale and scope of ICM in their nation. More importantly, the project helped create committed, capable, interagency groups that continue to work together to address urgent ICM issues.

The ‘Beneficial Uses’ approach in coastal management in Hong Kong: a compromise between rapid urban development and sustainable development

In Hong Kong, continuing population increase, economic growth and fast urban and infrastructure developments have exacerbated the already polluted inshore waters and exerted an unprecedented pressure on the coastal environment. Coral, seagrass and other marine habitats have been adversely affected and estimated fisheries loss has exceeded US$ 26 million. As a compromise between the rapid urban expansion and sustainable development of the coastal environment, a long-term strategy for the protection of the marine environment has been introduced on the basis of the ‘Beneficial Uses’ approach. Coastal habitats are classified in terms of their ecological, economic and scientific importance, and priority of protection assigned according to their relative importance, beneficial uses and susceptibility to pollution. Although not entirely satisfactory, this approach minimises major conflicts between different beneficial uses and the impact of developments on sensitive coastal areas. It affords realistic protection to vital coastal resources under the enormous pressure of rapid urban development.

Strategic approaches in coastal zone management in semi‐enclosed seas. Requirements and realities: environmental protection and economic development

The UNCED 1992 Conference marked the end of a period, and present a turning point in environmental protection. Major international Conventions and Protocols (MARPOL, LDC, LOS, Barcelona — to mention only those of major importance for the Mediterranean) have provided an institutional framework for the protection of the sea and its coastal regions. Their impact and achievements are positive and demonstratable, yet in practice they have fallen short of major requirements of marine environmental protection based on scientific evidence, of what has been possible in technical or technological sense, and of what has been expected by the public at large. The negative trend in marine environmental quality has generally not been reversed. The presentation will try to answer the question: Why? A major flaw is considered to be the lack of strategies integrating environmental requirements and economic conditions. At present, discussions on legislation and its implementation are often framed in terms of compliance with...

Western Australia's nonstatutory approach to coastal zone management: An evaluation

Abstract Western Australia is fortunate that there have been few natural disasters on the coast. However, low levels of coastal erosion during the 1970s demonstrated the need to establish coastal zone management in that state of Australia. The erosion was quickly contained because private ownership to the high water mark is almost nonexistent, private property being set back behind coastal reserves along most of the coast. The provision of coastal reserves has been part of a deliberate nonstatutory coastal planning and management approach. As a result Western Australia has been able to use existing acts, coordination between existing government agencies, and coastal policies rather than enact specific coastal legislation to manage the coast.

Coastal zone management in Australia

Abstract The coastal management approaches developed by Australian states are a function of the issues of concern, technical understanding of problems, and the political philosophy when the agencies were established. Victoria has based its efforts on coordination between agencies and planning of public lands; Queensland on technical understanding of beach processes; South Australia on comprehensive planning and state‐local collaboration; and New South Wales on planning controls. The federal government has not accepted an overall role in coastal management although it does intervene with states on a variety of issues. A Federal Coastal Management Council has been proposed to disseminate information and encourage collaboration between states, and this proposal is still under investigation.

Symposia on Ecological Approach in Coastal Zone Management, held in Indonesia in Bandung on 26–27 January 1976, Bogor on 29–31 March 1976, and Jakarta on 24–25 May 1976

Symposia on Ecological Approach in Coastal Zone Management, held in Indonesia in Bandung on 26–27 January 1976, Bogor on 29–31 March 1976, and Jakarta on 24–25 May 1976