ICZM is based upon fundamental premises and principles. Those appearing below were adapted from a report prepared for the US National Park Service (Clark, in press, a). While the degree of specificity to ICZM is self-evident for most of the principles and premises, the list is arranged so that items more specific to ICZM appear toward the beginning of the list and those of more general application toward the end.
The major resource systems of the coast have no equal on land. Coastal ecosystems and key coastal habitats - such as coral reefs and mangrove forests - are not only distinctive, but extremely productive of renewable resources. Clearly, traditional land-based or marine-based forms of management and planning must be modified to be effective for the coast, at the transition between land and sea.
From the natural sciences point of view, the coastal area is an extremely complex, highly diverse, and complicated system - a complexity that ensures a continuing high need for help from scientists in the coastal planning sphere. From a planner's viewpoint, the coast is a place with an inherently incomplete database and where major influences - e.g., storms, erosion, fish migrations - are usually unpredictable and where land-based planning principles are often irrelevant.
Sea fisheries, important in many ways, have no terrestrial counterpart. Seafood is recognized as a critically important resource (Brown et al., 1985); it provides more protein worldwide per caput per year (6.5 kg or 16.1 lb) than beef and mutton combined (5.1 kg or 12.2 lb). Yet economic planners take slight notice, perhaps because seafood production is a mysterious pursuit carried out far from cities and incomprehensible to most persons. Also fisheries are variable and, in large measure, unpredictable and unprogrammable in the usual economic sense.
Some of the most difficult resource conflicts of the coastal zone arise from conversion of coastal lowlands from natural habitats to agriculture uses. To the upland economic planner it may seem logical to drain and plant the lowlands and wetlands, until discovering that the potential of soils in coastal lowlands is usually quite low because peaty conditions cause acid-sulphate soils and because there is a high incidence of flooding. One must be very cautious with mangrove swamp or brackish transition swamp/marsh conversions to agriculture. For example, Burbridge and Stanturf (1985) see agriculture on the Southeast Asian coast as a risky business, particularly in making careful decisions about using soil sites that require continuous high levels of management to achieve socio-economic benefits. Also, lowland/wetland developments have potentially harmful side effects; e.g. the release of agriculture chemicals into riverine and coastal waters (Berwick and Chamberlain, 1985).
No realistic amount of investment can overcome the natural forces which have created these lowland/wetland areas or the natural hazards which will continue to influence their use. And there is also a danger that hazards such as periodic flooding will be exacerbated by poor management of clearing and draining in coastal lowlands leading to flash floods. Such floods pose serious risks to farmers (Burbridge and Stanturf, (1985) and can overwhelm estuary or lagoon with pulses of sediment, organics, and chemical pollutants.
Another example of special ICZM problems is urban waterfront development, which is both vital to coastal cities and threatening to coastal resources. High quality shorefront land parcels are in high demand, particularly those that extend to and/or across the intertidal zone and carry such values as ship berthing, access to fishing, access to the beach for tourists, and unobstructed view of the sea from home or apartment. With this focus at the water's edge, the development planning context tends to narrow to a linear approach; that is, it focuses on the Mean High Water line and the properties that straddle that line.
Because of the general scarcity of good shorefront land and its importance to coastal communities, both centrally planned and free market countries have reason to allocate coastal land uses within a broader social perspective than ordinary land and take a longer-term, more comprehensive and integrated approach, one that includes conservation and social equity needs as well as economic growth objectives. For example, in the USA “non-waterfront dependent” uses of waterfront land are typically discouraged and usually denied if negative environmental effects are predicted (by exercise of state CZM or Federal permit authority). Planners should attempt to keep options open for future high priority development.
As these few examples show, the special characteristics of the coastal zones require special planning and management approaches, such as those found in ICZM-type programmes, approaches which anticipate and deal with unusual problems and the unique conflicts that arise along the coast. It is clear that those who work with ICZM programmes should have special training and experience.
Unfortunately, the place where the land ends is also the place where the knowledge and experience of most administrators ends. Planners, managers, engineers, and politicians alike are usually not well informed about the sea and the sea coast. Those who do have knowledge are usually experts in particular subjects - navigation, fisheries science, or hydrodynamics - who know the sea and the sea coast from a specialist's point of view rather than from a systems perspective. Those few who have prepared themselves to know the sea and seacoast as a natural system and who understand the interactions of sea and coastal land, are exceptionally important to ICZM programmes. Only recently has formal graduate level training been available to those who would choose to make ICZM a career. ICZM is recognized as an interdisciplinary pursuit, not as a distinct discipline.
Every aspect of an ICZM programme relates to water in some way, requiring the creation of unusual and sometimes complex institutional arrangements. Water provides both the economic base and the social and cultural structure for coastal communities. It provides beaches and viewscapes and gives rise to traditions of fisheries and maritime shipping. But water also erodes beaches and floods coastal cities in response to storm events.
Virtually all of the water of interest to ICZM is moving water; it is either oscillating with the tides or running down from the land in rivers. Ocean currents bring salty waters from the ocean to mix with fresh water from the land along the open coast or in lagoons and estuaries. In humid coastal areas where extensive fresh water discharge dilutes seawater, salinity level is a principle determinant of the type and abundance of species that are present.
Being at “sea level” elevation, the coast is the eventual receiving basin for all land runoff water and the wastes it carries. Consequently, a large share of the world's pollution ends up in coastal lagoons, estuaries, wetlands, submerged grass beds, and coral reefs. Coastal discharging rivers not only bring pollution, they also gather and bring rampaging flood waters into the coastal plain.
In summary, because it operates at the water/land interface, every aspect of ICZM relates to water in one way or another, whether making provisions for making commerce or the ravages of sea storms, or resource conservation, or pollution abatement. The water influence not only establishes special conditions, it also dictates unusual and complex institutional arrangements. In most countries a great variety of agencies have interests in coastal waters, interests that are sometimes complementary but more often competitive. The value of an ICZM programme is that it can serve to coordinate all the varied interests in coastal resources and coastal development.
The ICZM process recognizes coastal shorelands, lowlands, intertidal areas, lagoons, and open waters as a single interacting and indivisible resource unit that lies between the upland and the open sea and whose future must be planned and managed in combination. Ecologically, any uncontrolled development activity located anywhere near coastal areas - in watersheds, floodplains, wetlands, tidelands, or water basins - has the potential for damage to the coastal waters ecosystem.
Between the geographic extremes of the hinterlands and the deep sea, falls the area usually delineated as the ICZM planning zone - the transitional strip of land and sea that straddles the coastline including the narrow edge zone of mostly intertidal habitats. This strip contains some of the most biologically productive and economically valuable habitats of the biosphere, including estuaries, coastal wetlands, and fringing coral reefs. But it must be recognized that this area also contains dense human populations and undergoes great environmental modification and deterioration through landfill, dredging, and pollution associated with urban, industrial, and agricultural development. It is the core area of the ICZM programme.
The relationship between the “dryside” and “wetside” of the coast - that is, between the terrestrial and the marine realms - precludes the effective management of a marine or estuarine resource system without concurrent management of adjacent land habitats. Therefore, the proposition that coastal ecosystems must include both dryside (land) and wetside (water) components and that they should be managed together is considered fundamental. Development planners must recognize, particularly, that modification of the land area (e.g., land clearing and grading) has a high potential for adverse effects on lagoon or estuarine coastal systems (Figure 5.1). It follows that ICZM must address land modification activities, principally those associated with site preparation for development (Clark et al., 1980).
This emphasis on the land/water interface of the seacoast and its particular influences makes the ICZM process unique in the realm of integrated planning and management.
Although the coastal zone may be drawn broadly or narrowly, it always includes the water's edge - the boundary line between land and sea that includes the subtidal, intertidal and supratidal zones. This is where authority changes abruptly, where storms hit, where waterfront development locates, where boats make their landfalls, and where some of the richest aquatic habitat is found. It is also where typical terrestrial type planning and resource management programmes are at their weakest. The edge zone includes coastal floodplains, mangroves, marshes and tidal flats, beaches and dunes, and fringing corals. It is a place of great dynamism and energy.
The habitats, species, and other resources under the purview of ICZM planning would include the areas from a defined upland limit downslope, or through lowland, dunes, and flood lands to estuaries, swamps, beaches, shallow waters, and perhaps even extend to include the smaller coastal islands. In the open waters, the management programme should focus on shallower nearshore coastal waters, but it could in some cases extend seaward.
The water's edge is also the place where the greatest competition and conflict between users is found and where governments need to develop the type of special policies and programmes that ICZM offers. Experience with developing ICZM type programmes in several countries indicates that while the policy and planning agenda may cover a wider coastal zone, the operating programme itself will usually target the narrower edge zone.
There is no single description of “coastal area” or “coastal zone” for the ICZM process; boundaries are delineated on the basis of the particular problems that ICZM attempts to solve. The boundaries must be adaptive to the goals and objectives.
According to Sorensen and McCreary (1990), boundaries for integrated coastal management programmes should be tailored to capture, and enable resolution of, all the major coastal issues. Because there is a broad array of possible coastal issues, there is a broad array of possible ICZM management boundaries. Some boundaries are quite narrow, and are best suited to deal with use conflicts occurring at the immediate shoreline. But if watershed generated impacts are serious, then a coastal management boundary extending far inland would be justified. The ICZM zone of jurisdiction may be based on political and administrative considerations as well as economic and biogeographic ones (Snedaker and Getter, 1985).
Figure 5.1 Impact of Upland Agriculture on Coastal Resources. Source: Snedaker and Getter (1985)
It would be valid to include in the coastal zone all areas that have an influence on coastal waters. But this definition could be politically self-defeating if it encompasses all coastal plains and the watersheds of all streams and rivers that drain into the sea (which at times extend hundreds of kilometres inland) because of so much resistance to such a broad area of control. But, it is necessary to have some input into how resource uses are controlled in the watersheds which are the sources of excessive siltation and chemical pollution of coastal waters.
It might also be valid to set the seaward ICZM boundary at the edge of the continental shelf (as defined by the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea) or even the exclusive economic zone (200 mi or 320 km), if important land use/water use management issues extend that far seaward. In any event, the concept of coastal zone should reflect all the different legal regimes within it, such as, internal waters, territorial seas, contiguous zone, continental shelf, EEZ, and also, where they might be useful, straits, regime of islands, archipelagic states, etc. (M.T. Cirelli and M.A. Mekouar, Legal Officer, FAO, pers. comm.).
Use of the term “coastal zone” (as in ICZM) indicates that the coastal zone has been distinguished as a geographical zone apart from, yet between, the oceanic domain and the hinterlands (the terrestrial or uplands domain). For example, the Sri Lanka ICZM programme has authority over a zone that extends from 300 m landward of the mean high water line to 1 km seaward of the mean low waterline; the landward boundary may be extended to a maximum of 2 km inland where rivers, lagoons, or estuaries occur (CCD, 1986).
In the first regional ICZM programme in the USA, the San Francisco Bay Conservation and Development Commission, successfully protected the Bay with jurisdiction for a zone that extended only 100 feet (30.48 m) inward of the water's edge (Mean High Water). In another example, the ICZM programme for Washington State covers only 200 feet (60.96 m) of the edge zone. Such narrow zones function satisfactorily in the USA because numerous other federal and state laws control actions in the intertidal area and near coast waters seaward of the edge zone and in the shorelands landward of the edge zone.
In summary, the geographical jurisdiction of ICZM is variable but the ICZM programme will be the most effective when its geographic scope is the most limited. The ICZM zone has both inland and ocean boundaries. Small islands would be included in toto as long as they were within the ICZM oceanward boundary. Given the environmental, resource, and governmental differences among coastal nations and subnational units (provinces, towns) there is considerable variety in the selection of boundaries to delineate both seaward and inland extent of the ICZM zone.
While planning and management strategies may of necessity include some control on use of private lands and private activities, a major purpose of ICZM is the caretaking of common property resources of the wetside of the coast, such as coastal waters, coral reefs, or mangrove forests. Management of common property is an important function of government and one that often receives too low a priority; as stated by J. Gritzner (1986), “… neglect of common property issues is often a principal cause of failure in development projects…”.
The resources of most critical concern to ICZM are along the edge of the coastal sea, in lagoons and estuaries, and in the transition zone of beaches, mangroves, and tidal flats. In most countries these places are not owned by individuals or private entities, but are “commons” where the public has more or less free access and use. Therefore, the resources of coastal areas are the responsibility of governmental agencies. Depending upon traditions and circumstances, jurisdiction may be shared in any combination of entities: national government, state or provincial governments, tribal chiefs (in some South Pacific countries) and so forth.
The edge zone of intertidal and shallow areas may be the most ignored part of the coastal commons and the one in most need of management through ICZM programmes. Therefore, in the ICZM planning phase, a priority should be given to understanding the use, jurisdiction, and issues concerning these edge zone resources (see preceding section).
Water-related disasters are virtually inevitable in any coastal nation. They result from cyclonic storm attack, tsunamis (gigantic tidal waves), shore erosion, coastal river flooding, landslides and mud slides, and soil liquefaction. It is usually neither economically feasible to eliminate the hazards through engineering (e.g., by building giant seawalls), nor to exclude all people and structures from the hazards zones. Most societies have developed administrative and social mechanisms to cope with the aftermath of extreme natural events (post-disaster relief). However, prevention of the same type of hazards is often ignored and thus development processes which increase the level of coastal hazards are free of control. This would appear to be a situation which should be remedied when one considers the high loss of life and property from natural hazards (e.g., an average death toll of 34 360 persons per year from cyclonic sea storms alone, reported by the Swedish Red Cross for the 1970s).
In addition to their ecological values, such coastal resources as reefs, beaches, dunes, and mangroves form important natural defences against wave action. Reefs act to “trip” storm waves, reducing their strength as they pass over the shallow depths. Beaches and their dunes and offshore bars are also efficient dissipators of waves energy. Where beach sand is deposited in bars offshore, water depth is decreased and storm waves break farther from shore; if the sand is deposited landward (in dunes) the effective width and volume of the beach is increased, further reducing the danger of severe loss of beach to destructive waves.
The ICZM-type programme is the best vehicle for combining coastal natural hazards prevention and resources conservation. As many experienced planners and managers already know, the measures best suited to conserving ecological resources are often the same as those needed to preserve the natural landforms that serve as barriers to storms and flooding.
The Philippines, Bangladesh, Saint Lucia, and dozens of other countries are affected by serious storms and flooding. This risk, and that from other hazards could be lessened through controls on type, density, and location of settlement through initiation of effective ICZM programmes. Of particular importance in such programmes is the maintenance of natural landforms that take the brunt of storms and therefore protect lives and community structures. An example is Bangladesh where 100 000 hectares of fringing mangrove forest were planted in the 1980s with World Bank financing. On 29 April 1991, when a rampaging cyclone struck the Bangladesh coast, many thousands of lives were saved by the mangrove “wall”.
A leading example of the use of ICZM for hazards prevention is the Sri Lanka programme which was motivated by coastal erosion and storm damage caused by mining of coral reefs (see Box 5.1).
Combining the dual goals of conserving coastal resources and maintaining nature's hazard protection systems can save money. Because of the link between uncontrolled development and disasters, an important aim of ICZM is to integrate the knowledge of coastal hazards and risks into development standards and planning guidelines. Specific guidelines for estimating the hazard risk level of a project or programme should be applied to every development proposal. This would ensure that projects do not unnecessarily increase risk and, further, that they can be implemented in a way that reduces existing hazard risks and is cost-effective. An example worth studying is the massive runoff from rainstorms associated with a major “El Nino” event in 1983 which caused high property damage to the Ecuador coast and also disabled much of the aquaculture industry.
In summary, fully comprehensive ICZM programmes include both natural hazards prevention and coastal resources conservation (Sorensen and McCreary, 1990) using similar methods to accomplish both objectives.
Coastal resource management requires involvement by all levels of government. The local governments are involved because they govern where development takes place, where resources are found, and where the benefits or penalties are mainly to be felt. The central government has to be involved because responsibility and authority for marine affairs inevitably rests there (navigation, national security, migratory fish, international relations, etc.). Intermediate levels of government - e.g., state (provincial) or regional - are involved because all entities which have responsibility in the coastal area have a role in the ICZM process.
Coastal areas are governmentally complex and require a high level of intergovernmental coordination. Some of the reasons are given below:
the amount and complexity of public interest in coastal areas are high;
the effects of conflicts and impacts of one sector on another that require government intervention are exceptionally high;
there is considerable involvement with public (common property) resources and their conservation;
water is a fluid resource which is not containable or ownable in the usual sense, and which simultaneously affects all coastal interests;
a greater variety of coordinated multi-governmental policy decisions is required in coastal areas; and
there tends to be a high level of international interest in coastal matters.
| BOX 5.1 - SRI LANKA'S COASTAL ZONE MANAGEMENT PLAN | |
| CASE STUDY | |
| Sri Lanka's Coast Conservation Department (CCD), the nation's lead agency for coastal zone management, has recently completed a draft of its first legislatively mandated national Coastal Zone Management Plan (CZMP), culminating four years of intensive work. The CZMP focuses on three national priorities: | Regulatory measures prohibit the construction of shoreline protection work in some geographic locations, while they establish review procedures for constructing such structures along the rest of the coast. In addition, coral and sand mining are regulated. Both activities accelerate the rate of coastal erosion in areas with already serious erosion problems. Also included in the erosion management strategy are: a public education campaign targeted at coral and sand miners regarding the impacts of their activities, a programme to identify alternative employment for displaced coral miners, and a research effort to identify alternate sources of lime for the building industry. Complementing these management efforts is a public investment programme to build shoreline protection works in appropriate areas. |
| - erosion management | |
| - loss and degradation of coastal natural habitats | |
| - protection of scenic areas and cultural and religious sites. | |
| The CZMP, which was developed in close coordination with other Sri Lankan agencies, concerned about and responsible for coastal resources represents the best available analysis of the nation's coastal problems. In addition, it provides both a policy framework and a practical strategy for dealing with the problems. | |
| Management strategies, which include regulation, research programmes, enhanced intergovernmental coordination and public education, are presented for each priority issue. For example, the erosion management strategy establishes a setback line to ensure that structures are not sited so close to the shoreline that they contribute to or are affected by erosion. | |
| Source: Olsen (1987) | |
The immediate shorelands (the dryside) are usually subject to more local or provincial government control and less central government control. However, non-development zones that exclude most private use may be imposed by central government to prohibit private encroachment into wetlands or beaches, or to guarantee unrestricted public access to the public resources of the shore (Sorensen and McCreary, 1990). An example is Costa Rica where much of the mangrove coast is protected.
For the marine and transition areas (the wetside) central government authority is prevalent. In the intertidal zone - wetlands, tidal flats, beaches - the “public trust” is often strongly asserted, which, in turn, invokes central government control. Central governments usually act as the “trustees” of the common (public) property of coastal areas.
For the uplands, or hinterlands, the practice in most nations is to exercise even less control than for coastal areas. Exceptions may be found among nations with strong programmes for land use planning or town and country planning (e.g., United Kingdom) or nations with strong centralized economic development programmes (Sorensen and McCreary, 1990).
By comparison, most social policy areas (e.g., criminal justice, public education, and health care) involve relatively fewer government sectors than coastal management. The greater the number of sectoral divisions within a policy area (such as ICZM) the greater the potential for fragmentation of governmental responsibility and duplication of effort.
In summary, coastal areas and coastal resource systems are governmentally complex because of the degree of shared jurisdiction and the amount of common property resources involved. Therefore, ICZM activities need to involve all levels from national to village governments.
The most cost-effective approach to coastal development and coastal engineering is one that respects the strength of natural forces operating at the coast and that designs projects to utilize or adapt to these forces - this is the “nature-synchronous” or “design with nature” approach (McHarg, 1969).
Countries with limited investment capital and a critical need for food and economic betterment cannot afford to waste their money on overly expensive or ineffective structures. Yet this has happened too often with projects engineered to defy natural forces and ecological processes. Natural forces are exceptionally strong in coastal areas - wind, waves, erosion, storm surges, and tides. The beachfront is a place of extraordinary release of natural energy and a place where mistakes can be very costly. Special risks are attached to development on the ocean beachfront, where buildings are directly in the path of storm-driven waves.
Beaches and dunes shift with changes in the balance between the erosive forces of storm winds and waves, on the one hand, and the restorative powers of tides and currents, on the other. Consequently, along much of its length, the coast is a risky place to maintain habitation. The costs in property losses and human lives have been high. Furthermore, enormous sums of public money are spent on “hard engineering” efforts to stabilize and safeguard beaches. These efforts are rarely rewarded with success.
“Soft engineering” - a nature-synchronous approach - offers a more cost-effective alternative to “hard engineering” and that works well in many, but not all, situations. For beach projects, the soft engineering approach recognizes that the natural beachfront exists in a state of dynamic tension, continually shifting in response to waves, winds, and tide and continually adjusting back to an equilibrium state. Long term stability is gained by holding the slope or profile of the beach intact by balancing the sand reserves held in various storage elements - dune, berm, offshore bar, and so forth. Each component of the beach profile is capable of receiving, storing and giving sand, depending on which of several constantly changing forces is dominant at the moment. The storage capacity of each of the components must be maintained at the highest possible level. This can be facilitated in some cases by proper design in locating wave absorbing structures (rip-rap) rather than wave-reflecting structures (concrete bulkheads).
Many applications of nature-synchronous engineering approaches for beach stabilization can be cited; for example, harbour inlet stabilization, dune management, and beach replenishment. There are other applications such as vegetated storm water drainage ways and buffer strips (instead of concrete ditches), mangrove buffer strips along channels (instead of bulkheads), and retention of flood plains to store flood waters (rather than concrete storm water canals). Most soft engineering approaches have less damaging impact on coastal renewable resources than hard approaches.
In summary, in both planning and in management (project review/environmental assessment) phases, preference should be given to nature-synchronous options (Figure 5.2).
Because numerous economic sectors are influencing the coastal area, one must examine the economic “externalities” of each. When any one sector attempts to gain the highest economic yield from its activities, it often attempts to avoid responsibility for its external effects. For example, a factory operator may wish to avoid financial responsibility for the degradation of fisheries or inhibition of tourism caused by his factory wastes polluting a bay. The ICZM process examines the effects of “externalities” of any one sector on other sectors, most importantly the effects of “dryside” (shoreland) private activities, upon the common resources of the “wetside” of the coastal area.
Figure 5.2 The plan for relocating Captain Sam's Inlet using “Software engineering” principles. The project freed a large volume of sand trapped at existing inlets to renourish the downdrift beach. Source: Hayes (1985)
Burbridge and Koesoebiono (1981) point out that it is difficult to assess ecosystems adequately applying economic techniques normally used in project planning. First, many of the goods and services produced by these systems in their natural state are not easily expressed in cash terms; and second, many of these goods and services are harvested “offsite”, that is, they are external to the discrete ecosystem and become economic externalities within adjoining systems.
The absence of quantifiable market values for many “environmental” goods and services does not present an insurmountable problem because qualitative assessments of their significance can be incorporated into a carefully constructed analysis. However, while some factors can be quantified (e.g., expected changes in income levels), others are not quantifiable (impact upon traditional lifestyles). Both types of effects should be researched and brought together with other relevant information as part of the package of factors to be considered.
Burbridge and Koesoebiono (1981) note that there are two broad considerations concerning human resources. The first is assessing the negative or positive impacts of development programmes and projects on the people who will be affected. The second concerns consultation with these people in the project formulation, planning and implementation processes.
International donor agencies normally have some broad social objective in stimulating development. Therefore, a more broadly based assessment of projects and the ecosystem framework within which they operate is required, one which expresses a development project's impact upon society as a whole. Factors that are often excluded from financial analyses - such as the costs imposed by pollution - should be considered by donor agencies and project planners in an economic analysis (Burbridge and Koesoebiono, 1981).
ICZM programmes require the highest level of public participation possible or appropriate (Box 5.2). People who live along the coast and have traditionally used coastal resources may be greatly affected by new rules and procedures. Therefore they must be involved in the formation of new coastal policies and rules on resource use, if they are to support them. To the question “Why should local communities support sustainable and ecologically sound uses?”, Alan White (1987) replies as follows: “Traditionally, these communities understand the limits to natural marine ecosystems and productivity, but in the modern, overpopulated world, this tradition is being lost.” White (1987) develops the argument further in the following statement about support for coastal parks and protected areas:
“Education and good examples (pilot projects) can show and remind people what is possible in terms of sustainable use and the value of protected areas. But education is not participation. Participation comes from wanting to support common values to gain some real or perceived benefit for the individual and community. Without it, marine resources can never be conserved and sustained because “enforcement” of laws in such a commons is not practicable. When people decide to “participate”, they as resource users will make the real difference in protected area management. The solution thus lies in helping people to decide to participate in a constructive manner. Once resource users decide to do so and receive the associated benefits, the process will perpetuate itself.”
An important ICZM premise is that coastal renewable resources should be managed to produce benefits on a long-term, sustainable, basis. Sustainable use is the alternative to resource depletion that accompanies excessive exploitation for short-term profit. A corollary is that development projects should be designed to sustain themselves without continued subsidy. According to Burbridge and Koesoebiono (1981), there are major physical, biological and socio-economic factors involved in determining the levels of reasonable resource exploitation. This involves conscious economic choices by individual societies on the allocation of scarce capital, manpower and technology. Recently there has been a shift in political reasoning away from exploitive, non-sustainable uses, which are expensive in terms of management costs and risky in terms of the fore closure of future development options. In the ICZM process the priority is given to resource uses that are sustainable.
| BOX 5.2 - CITIZEN PARTICIPATION IN CAMP | |
| Participation is a tool available to the entire management community (resource users, public agencies, non-governmental organizations, etc.) to ensure the effectiveness of management solutions. Participation is a duty because the issue remains above all one of human development and because people are not the object of that development but the subject of development and the makers of their own history. It is an instrument of democracy and a guarantee for the overall improvement in the quality of human life. | Nor is it a means to get a particular group or sector “aligned” to the needs of another group. What it does is to ensure that we move from single sectoral concerns and individual concerns to a collective agenda which all parties will be better armed to address. Participation serves to unite people in the sharing of needs and ideas and in the working of solutions. |
| More specifically, the objectives of participation can be placed at four levels: | |
| - participation is a way to ensure that popular knowledge and experience is indeed integrated into the planning and management process | |
| Nor is participation a “way to sell premade decisions”. It should be a consultation with ideas growing in both directions. Planners and managers too often resort to public participation and involvement only because a particular management decision is difficult to enforce or encounters opposition. | |
| - participation ensures that all needs and priorities are taken into account in the formulation of management decisions | |
| - participation gives a better guarantee for the quality of the solution identified and for its adaptation to a particular condition | |
| If we were to attempt a definition of participation, we would see it as a true dialogue between all parties concerned with a particular resource in order to ensure that there is a sharing of agendas. Participation is not intended to change the views of the fisherman, the government officials, the planners or the consumer. | |
| - participation in planning and problem identification promotes involvement in the actual implementation of decisions. | |
| Source: Renard (1986) | |
As explained by Snedaker and Getter (1985), in most parts of the world, renewable coastal resources tend to be economically limited. Over time, the economic demand for a given resource will commonly exceed the supply, be it arable land, fresh water, wood or fish. Sustainable use management ensures that renewable resources remain available to future generations. The criterion for sustainable use is that the resource not be harvested, extracted or utilized in excess of the amount which can be produced or regenerated over the same time period. In essence, the resource is seen as a capital investment with an annual yield; it is therefore the yield that is utilized and not the capital investment which is the resource base. By sustaining the resource base, annual yields are assured in perpetuity.
The difficulty of sustainable use management, or conservation, of coastal resources rises year by year because of increases in coastal populations, desire for short term foreign exchange earnings, the availability of technology, and so forth. Restrictive allocation of the resources of the coastal commons tends to come only after excessive exploitation causes serious depletion of resources and resulting shortages of food and materials or social conflicts. However, some coastal communities have solved this problem by traditional management mechanisms and consequently are ensured of sustained yields of seafood and other coastal products. ICZM-type programmes encourage the continuance of effective traditional management systems operated at the local level (see Principle 14).
In summary, ICZM programmes are founded on the proposition that renewable resource systems must be managed to provide a sustainable level of output.
Exclusive use of a particular coastal resource unit for a single economic purpose is discouraged by ICZM in favour of a balance of multiple uses whereby economic and social benefits are maximized, and conservation and development become compatible goals.
Contrary to some current impressions, conservation and economic development are not conflicting ideas. In fact, well-planned conservation-oriented development will add to the general economic and social prosperity of a coastal community, while bad development will sooner or later have a negative effect.
The simultaneous achievement of development goals and resource conservation goals may require that communities modify development patterns. However, with innovative management based upon sustainable use, communities may be able to achieve a desirable balance without serious sacrifice to either short term development progress or longer term conservation needs.
As planners sort out the problems, opportunities, and issues of the coastal area, those which most naturally fall under an ICZM programme become obvious. The tableau will vary from country to country according to conservation needs, traditions, norms, and governmental systems. But compatible multiple-use objectives should always be encouraged with the goal of strengthening the programme, improving its efficiency, and guaranteeing the greatest benefit to coastal communities through equitable sharing of resources.
According to Burbridge (1986), factors such as the potential utility of the goods and services, manpower, and market forces play a significant role in the way natural systems are used. The potential benefits that complex resource systems, such as estuaries and mangrove forests, offer to social and economic development depend on maintenance of the functional integrity of these natural systems. They should be developed for a broad spectrum of sustainable multiple uses, not converted to any single purpose use. The multiplicity of benefits these natural systems offer is often overlooked because most development plans for coastal areas focus upon maximizing single purpose uses. The management systems usually created are too narrow and generally fail to harness much of the resource potential offered by natural systems. As a result, many opportunities for the improvement of economic and social welfare of coastal people are not realized.
A very basic problem in many countries is that responsibility for complex natural resource systems is given to agencies which represent only one economic sector. For example, because mangroves are trees, mangrove forests are often made the responsibility of a Ministry of Forestry. While alert foresters may become aware of the value of mangroves in controlling coastal erosion and the importance of mangroves to the conservation of fisheries, their primary responsibility is to develop mangrove forests for wood production. They are, therefore, not normally asked to conduct broadly based environmental and economic assessments of mangrove systems or to develop management plans for sustainable uses other than forestry (Burbridge, 1986).
In economic terms, the multiple-use concept requires that all actual and potential uses for resource utilization schemes be determined so as to ensure that the sum of the “opportunity costs” is minimal. Opportunity costs represent the value of those lost options(or opportunities) that would otherwise be derived from using other resources, as opposed to committing one resource for an exclusive use. For example, in determining the allocations of fresh water for either irrigation or fishery maintenance, if the use of fresh water is exclusively for irrigation, then this imposes an opportunity cost for fisheries which equals the annual income which could have been obtained but is now lost due to its collapse (e.g., the Egyptian sardine fishery in the Mediterranean and the hilsa fishery in Pakistan). A major advantage in a balanced multiple-use programme for a coastal resource is that investment risk is lowered. The multiplicity of uses provides a hedge against failure of any one use of a resource and enables flexibility in face of unexpected change in the market or natural variation in the productivity of the resource.
In summary, the maximum flow of natural goods and services from a coastal resource system can be expected in a multiple-use ICZM approach.
A major purpose of ICZM is to coordinate the initiatives of the various coastal economic sectors toward long-term optimal socio-economic outcomes, including resolution of use conflicts and beneficial trade-off. This integrated, multiple-sector approach is designed to interrelate and jointly guide the activities of two or more economic sectors in planning and management. This supports a programmatic goal to optimize resource conservation, public use, and economic development.
International assistance agencies commonly use the term “sectoral” planning, or management, to describe these activities within a particular economic sector or development area. Some of the more common sectors are: agriculture, forestry, fisheries, energy, transportation, manufacturing, tourism, housing, military, and public health. Any of these sectoral areas can be further divided into more specialized coastal components; for example, transportation may be divided into shipping, ports, and surface transportation (Sorensen and McCreary, 1990). A further sector to be considered is the public, or social, sector, including the various publics who are affected by private and government decisions.
Almost every sector has a strong stake in the coastal area. It would be virtually impossible to allocate the coast to a single one of these economic sectors for development, or even to give one or two sectors a priority for coastal development. In fact, it is the intense conflict over use of the coast that so often arises among the various sectors that makes the ICZM process so necessary. A major goal of ICZM is to identify conflicts over coastal land and coastal renewable resources and to find ways to allocate and manage uses for the optimum long-term benefit of the nation in a multiple-use format.
Coastal natural hazards are usually addressed in sectoral plans for public health and safety. But natural disasters cut across all coastal dependent economic sectors. Wind damage from a hurricane, inundation by a tsunami, or rapid coastal erosion can affect tourism, the fishing industry, port operations, public works, and transportation. Other sectors such as housing and industry are also vulnerable. The potentially devastating consequences of development in coastal hazard prone areas, necessitate the use of integrated coastal planning (Sorensen and McCreary, 1990).
Whenever possible, the public sector (the general public of the community) should be consulted about any major coastal development. According to Renard (1986), public participation is a tool available to the entire management community (resource users, public agencies, non-governmental organizations, etc.) to ensure the quality and the effectiveness of the management solutions that will be implemented. Participation is also a duty because the issue remains, above all, one of human developement, and because “…people are not the object of that development but the subject of development and the makers of their own history”.
Local communities that have exclusive rights to their adjacent marine resources have typically evolved effective conservation programmes. Recently, the potential of “traditional” conservation approaches (customary fishing rights, marine tenure, etc.) has been increasingly explored. Johannes (1982) explains as follows:
..“Throughout most of Oceania the right to fish in a particular area was controlled by a clan, chief or family. Generally this control extended from mangrove swamps and shorelines across reef flats and lagoons to the outer reef slope. It would be difficult to overemphasize the importance of some form of limited entry such as this to sound fisheries management. Without some control on fishing rights, fishermen have little incentive not to overfish since they cannot prevent others catching what they leave behind. This is a central tenet of fisheries management science. Under modern conditions the government must assume the sole responsibility for placing and enforcing fisheries conservation measures. This is a difficult and expensive responsibility under the best of circumstances; it is close to impossible in most tropical artisanal fisheries”…
A corollary to the above is that the incentive to protect the resource base - physical habitats and water quality - is stronger where access to the area is limited to traditional users who still maintain control. Thus, in countries where customary fishing rights are maintained, serious consideration should be given to the maintenance of these rights. However, as Johannes points out: “It would be a mistake to romanticize traditional island fishermen, to view them as ideal conservationists living in perfect harmony in nature and one another.”
Consequently, ICZM should recognize that often the most socially desirable and efficient approach to resource management is allocation according to traditional approaches worked out for specific cultures in specific coastal locations over hundreds or thousands of years. The yields obtained from coral reefs and lagoon fisheries in Oceania, acadjas in West Africa, vallicoltura in the Venice region, “fish crawls” on the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts, and small-scale traditional fisheries all over the world, have been maintained over centuries.
There is a striking similarity among the successful traditional methods of management and conservation of coastal systems that have been devised by the peoples of very different origins and cultures (Ruddle and Johannes, 1985). This commonality of success demands attention to the needs for continuation of traditional methods through ICZM where appropriate, particularly the protection of the community's rights to exclusive use of its traditional fishing areas.
In the coastal zone there have also been traditional (sometimes exclusive) rights to the use of certain lowlands and mangrove areas and these will be of major socio-economic concern to the communities involved. When governments attempt to reassign these areas from communal to private use, the traditional users can be very disturbed, as they were in certain islands of the Philippines when use of mangrove areas was transferred to private shrimp farmers.
Environmental assessment is a term used to describe both a governmental process and an analytical method. As a process, environmental assessment is usually imposed by government to require public agencies (and in some cases private developers) to predict environmental impacts, to coordinate aspects of planning, and to submit development proposals for review. As an analytic method, it is used to predict the effects of a project or a programme. According to Sorensen and McCreary (1990) three fundamental benefits arising from these objectives are that:
cause and effect relationships can be determined with reasonable accuracy and presented in terms understandable by policy-makers;
prediction of impacts will improve planning and decision making;
the government can enforce decisions emanating from the environmental process.
The assessment process includes prediction of a proposed project's effects on renewable coastal resources as well as the potential effects on the quality of the human environment. The process when mandated by law or executive decree generally involves a procedure that requires the following information: 1) the characteristics of the project site; 2) description of the project; and 3) description of the environmental impacts of a project for different dimensions of the environment. Usually it is required that alternatives to the project be identified and comparatively assessed, and measures to avoid or mitigate impacts be spelled out (Sorensen and McCreary, 1990).
While impact assessment is usually focused on the project level, assessments may focus at the programme level, such as for a regional economic development initiative. Programme level impact assessment - when done for a large geographic area - is conceptually similar to regional planning but does not include a mechanism to compel actual plan making and implementation.
The assessment of the social impact of development is an important part of the environmental and economic evaluation process (Cohen, 1985). In the present context, social impact assessment (SIA) is a way of trying to measure what might happen to people, their institutions, and their communities as a result of a particular environmental change. It involves the use of social science techniques to make predictions and to evaluate outcomes.
