CoastNet leading Futures thinking for Coastal Management

Coastal management has been around as a concept for some time now, and much attention has been given to the need for integration: both of policy and in relation to practical actions.

A tool that is commonly applied is the coastal management strategy, of which there are two variants:

• the sectoral strategy that seeks to implement engineering, for example, or nature conservation in an integrated way (taking into account other sectoral priorities and activities)
• the integrated strategy (the ICZM plan) that aims to pull together sectoral policies and actions into a single integrated plan or framework.

Both have their place, and both have their short-comings.

Considering the ICZM plan the logic is to have an integrated vision, strategy and action plan for a coastal area. However, whilst this approach can be helpful in bringing a coastal focus to issues and to management strategies, it can also complicate and confuse the picture by adding to the suite of visions that apply in any one place.

I believe that this is a significant barrier to the successful integration of coastal policy – organisations are pre-programmed to work in departments and to partition policy and management. Trying to force an external cross-cutting strategy onto this model will always be difficult.

So what does this mean for the future of ICZM and coastal management? We will need to develop more sophisticated mechanisms to mainstream coastal policy. That is, to ensure that coastal policies are seen as important alongside core spatial or social policy for example.

In part this will involve relating coastal issues better to mainstream policy and political issues such as the economy, jobs, housing, education, health etc. For too many people and institutions the coast is regarded as an environmental issue, rather than a socio-economic one.

We should explore how we can influence mainstream policies to secure a better deal for the coast, i.e. a more integrated policy approach, and a recognition of the uniqueness of many coastal issues.

A process of ‘coastal proofing’ of policy might be one approach, which involves considering the impacts of policy and actions in a holistic coastal context. There is scope too, for governments and the European Commission to give more guidance on what coastal issues are most important.

Of course, there will be wide variation from one locality to another. However, at a strategic level we can identify some high level issues that are generic to all coastal regions (at least in Europe).

I would suggest that these should include water management (including flooding), sediment management (including erosion), logistics (the movement of goods and people), and strategic infrastructure (ports, pipelines, energy generation facilities, telecommunications cables etc).

Finally we turn to the important issue of capacity-building.

Both at an institutional level and a human level, the knowledge and understanding required to meet the policy needs of the coast are not sufficiently well developed.

There is a strong argument for better training, and processes of institutional review designed with coastal management in mind.

These are all issues that feature on CoastNet’s agenda.

Keep in touch with us and see how our thoughts and ideas develop!