Coastal Zone Management

Introduction

Coastal areas contain some of the world’s most productive and diverse resources, including extensive areas of mangroves, coral reefs, and sea grass beds which are highly sensitive to human interventions. These ecosystems are also the source of a significant portion of global food production and support a variety of economic activities including fisheries, aquaculture, tourism and recreation, industry, transportation, ports and harbours, and navy activities. Because of these and other economics, about 50 - 70% of the world population are concentrated along the coastal areas. The world’s population is predicted to grow at a high rate and by far the greatest increases are expected to occur in the coastal areas of tropical nations, primarily in coastal and delta cities.

Increasing pressures of rapid population growth and economic development and the resulting conflicting interests and competing demands for use of coastal areas and resources often calls for trade-offs between conservation and development. Policy makers are faced with the challenge of ensuring economic development while limiting the impacts of such development on natural areas and protecting human life and infrastructure. Sectoral development interests which prevails in coastal areas makes decision making even more difficult and require mechanisms for cross sectoral cooperation. Coastal Zone Management (CZM) is now widely recognised as the most appropriate process to address the complex and tightly woven issues hat a coastal management programme must deal with.

Initially, the coast provided food and security for people. Later, the coast became foci for industrial and commercial development, and in recent years emphasis has shifted towards leisure and conservation, although the former uses remain important. Through these shifts of emphasis, man’s perception of the coast has changed from one of respect to one of depreciation. It is best to view the coast as a common resource, available to all. However, we need to apply certain standards of resource allocation through enlightened management. Such enlightenment comes only through an understanding of coastal systems, enabling management to balance pressure and to minimise risks. There is no doubt that this management will be a complex and difficult task, which requires knowledge over a wide range of disciplines.

In developing nations the coastal areas are often densely populated, fertile and the centre of economic activities and infrastructure development. But they are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, in particular sea level rise. These areas are currently experiencing difficulties as a result of rapid population growth, not integrated coastal zone management and conflicting resource utilisation. The problems frequently identified in the coastal zone relate to population safety (from flood-defence to contaminated drinking water), food supplies (from crop selection to harvest failure) and socio-well-being.

What is Coastal Zone Management?

The terms coastal zone management, integrated coast resources management, and coastal area planning and management are often used interchangeably in the international literature. There are two components to these terms: planning and management. Integrated planning is a process designed to interrelate and jointly guide the activities of two or more sectors in planning and development. The goal of integrated planning is the preparation of a comprehensive plan which specifies the means to effectively balance environmental protection, public use and economic development to achieve the optimum benefit for all concerned. The integration of activities usually involves coordination between data gathering and analysis, planning and implementation.

Coastal management is the process of implementing a plan designed to resolve conflicts among a variety of coastal users, to determine the most appropriate use of coastal resources, and to allocate uses and resources among legitimate stakeholders. Management is the actual control exerted over people, activities and resources. Public participation plays a key role in both planning and management. One may summarise this with the following description of the objective of Coastal Zone Management: The objective of Coastal Zone Management (CZM) is to analyse the autonomous coastal processes and their interactions with human activities with a view to develop the best strategy for management of existing and development of future activities.

CZM is different than IWRM. In IWRM we are managing water and its resources, while in CZM we are planning the development of the coastal zone in a sustainable way. Water and water quality management are important elements but it is part of the spatial plan of the coastal zone. CZM is more spatial planning and decision making of coastal development scenarios. The coastal areas are water users as they are part of river basins. Example, the river basin authority cannot use all fresh water flowing in the river to serve the various water users in the upper areas of the coast, since the coast also need a large amount of fresh water to protect the environment in the river mouth or delta from becoming too brackish. A minimal amount of fresh water (especially in the dry season) is required to control salt water intrusion in the river mouth during high tide. In simple term to push back the salt tongue entering the river mouth during high tide. Failure to do this will result in a brackish environment along the river mouth that may have negative impact on the quality of water supply for irrigation, industrial and domestic purposes. Problems in the coastal zone are of temporal (decades to centuries) and spatial scales (from coastal cells to regional -districts and provincial-, national, and even international levels).

A simple definition: “CZM is to plan coastal development in order to reach specific objectives”.

Objectives follow from a general policy regarding the coastal zone. Consequently, there are no CZM without a proper policy. The starting point is that on high (political) level a policy has to be defined regarding the coastal zone (e.g. “The coastal zone has to be developed in such a way that nature may keep a prominent place in future” or “The coastal zone has to be developed in such a way that it can give a sustainable living to as much as possible inhabitants”). From such a policy one can derive a development strategy and a related set of objectives.

Coastal Zone Management components:

CZM comprises of the following components:

Spatial and Socio-Economic Planning:

a.    Macro and project economy,

b.    Demography,

c.    Regional planning,

d.    Sociology,

e.    Specific sectors: fisheries and aquaculture, mining, tourist, transport (inland & maritime), industry & commercial activity (mainly private sector), national security (marine & navy).

2.     

      Environmental:

a.    Chemistry,

b.    Water quality,

c.    Biology,

d.    Ecology.

3.      

      Engineering:

a.    Coastal morphology,

b.    Tidal engineering,

c.    Hydrodynamics,

d.    Density currents (salt and fresh water control),

e.    Meteorology,

f.     Geology,

g.   Sea defence and coastline protection.

Sustainability of the coastal zone

Growing awareness about the limitedness of resources, about environmental degradation and consequent problems to mankind has triggered numerous studies to provide a long term resolution of the resources problem. Such studies are based on the concept of carrying capacity in terms of guidelines for socio-economic activities to achieve long term conservation of vital elements and areas of the environmental system. The importance of sustainable use of resources is extensively discussed in the Brundtland Report on Sustainable Development. The World Conservation Strategy defined three objectives in this context:

• Maintenance of essential ecological processes and life-support systems,
• Preservation of genetic diversity,
• Sustainable utilisation of species and ecosystems.

Although the concept of the “sustainable development of planet earth” is common currency, it is not very clear where it really stands for. It will become more obvious when we focus on a smaller scale: the Coastal Zone.

Source:

               Lecture note on Coastal Zone Management (H.J. Verhagen and J.T.L. Yap)

               SP-I Professional Study Programme on Water Resources Management

               Bandung 1997