Download Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Coastal Zone in an

Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: The Coastal Zone in an Era
of Globalisation
Laurence Mee1
Introduction; challenging the ICZM dogma
Science and policy rarely advance in a linear way. New ideas take time to be accepted
by the scientific community and eventually – usually by very indirect routes - trickle
down to policymakers and may become enshrined in policy; at least that is what natural
scientists would like to think. As a concept, coastal zone management did not develop
because of science but because of the obvious severity of human impacts on the
coastal landscape. The concept seems a “no brainer” these days but was quite
innovative four decades ago when it began to form the basis of new policy and
legislation such as the 1972 Coastal Zone Management Act (CZMA) in the USA.
But science was soon needed to develop the evidence base to give coastal zone
management policy and legislation some “teeth”. The simple notion that people needed
to work together to protect coastal landscapes quickly ran into difficulties because of
the highly sectoral way that human society had developed and the conflicting interests
by legitimate user groups. “What is the coastal zone?” was a frequent question. “Where
does it begin and end?” The answer was rarely clear; boundaries were sometimes
defined by natural features such as watershed, by administrative districts or even
deliberately left fuzzy. Soon the scientific and technical literature began to grow
heralding case studies and “best practices” often associated with social constructs of a
pluralistic liberal democratic society where facilitated dialogue would supposedly lead to
wise solutions.
In 1992, twenty years after the CZMA, the slightly more sophisticated term of Integrated
Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) had been coined for “Agenda 21” - product of the
Rio Summit on Environment and Development (UNCED, 1992). But many coastal
states in the USA had still not managed to incorporate the CZMA into their own
legislation.
By the mid-1990s, policy and projects that were labelled as ICZM had developed
throughout the world. Although the debate on where to set the boundaries for these
policies continued, a number of different management approaches emerged.
Considerable amounts of money have been invested to support these policies (though
1
Scottish Association for Marine Science, Dunstaffnage Marine Laboratory, Oban PA37 1QA, Scotland, UK
arguably insufficient in some circumstances). Despite all of this activity however, the
basic problem remains: in most parts of the world coastal natural habitats are declining
and exploited resources are dwindling, along with the livelihoods that depend on them.
Coastal social and ecological systems are losing their resilience and appear to be ever
more vulnerable to human and natural disasters.
So what is going wrong? Haven’t people woken up to the need for ICZM and all that it
implies or is there something wrong with the concept itself? In this paper, I will open the
debate by arguing that for many parts of the world, ICZM is not useful as a dominant
policy paradigm because it is unable to resolve the overwhelming underlying causes of
the problems that may exist at other scales. Indeed, I will suggest that the difficulty for
many policy advisors to suggest coherent boundaries was because of this weakness.
They may have also regarded many of the underlying causes as too hard to tackle.
Furthermore, in some cases, solutions developed on a coastal zone scale can simply
pass the problems on to someone else. In making these assertions, I will be careful not
to generalise; there are some clear cases where ICZM really seems to be working.
Certainly the experience, tools and science developed for ICZM can, and should,
provide the new thinking necessary to tackle the problem in a more comprehensive
way. I will suggest a new way of viewing ICZM as a key tool for adaptation and one that
has powerful applications in a rapidly changing world.
To support my case I will travel back to the dawn of civilisation, for we are treading a
long-trodden pathway and we may have tripped over some of the stones before. In the
words of Aldo Leopold "Instead of learning more and more about less and less, we must
learn more and more about the whole biotic landscape” (Aldo Leopold, Round River
1953). That biotic landscape includes humans, the dominant mammal on our planet,
with their ever expanding social and economic structures that sometimes seem to
stretch beyond their capacity to learn and understand.
Life on the fringe
As most of us were told at school, our primitive ancestors hopped, flapped or slithered
out of the sea in their evolution to terrestrial creatures. This only happened because of
the attractive environment provided by coastal ecotones, the uniquely rich area of
overlap between marine and terrestrial systems. Having one foot (or flipper) in each
system allows greater opportunities for food, shelter and escape from predators and this
strategy continues to be important for many animals and plants today.
Early humans may well have sought the coastal margins as a convenient place to find
food security, particularly in times of severe climate stress. Marean et al. (2007), for
example, have provided archaeological evidence from Pinnacle Point in South Africa to
demonstrate that the local human diet included seafood (largely intertidal shellfish) 164
thousand years ago. They suggested that humans followed the shifting position of the
coasts when sea levels responded to glaciations. Fix (2002) went further than this,
postulating through modeling that the Americas were colonized some 13.5 thousand
years ago, initially by rapid expansion along the coasts into both hemispheres. Amos
and Manica (2006) provide evidence to suggest that “most early humans lived near
large bodies of water”; we are indeed predominantly a coastal species.
The coastal zone continued to play a key role throughout history, particularly as
navigation and fishing skills improved. But this is only part of the story. Waves of
population growth by human migration often resulted from people being driven toward
the coast by inland wars or famine or because they were attracted to it by its resources.
These changes, coupled with the complexities of selective migration (a specific set of
individuals attracted to exploit particular resources) or the rapid overturning of existing
cultural norms, access rights or governance structures, inevitably began to put coastal
resources under pressure, and continue to do so today (Curran and Agardy, 2004). This
has been the situation throughout history though, and it is useful to reflect on this.
Since the dawn of recorded history, coastal systems have been under pressure as
civilizations have grown. European coastal lands were remodeled from Neolithic times
and the remarkable mobility of people along and beyond coastlines is revealed by relicts
such as standing stones on remote Atlantic islands. Later, the Phoenicians and Ancient
Greeks were effective at extending their resource base through navigation along
coastlines and were adept at trading using tactics that must have resembled modern
globalization at the time. Celtic princes on the Atlantic seaboard of Europe sourced wine
from the Mediterranean in return for tin, Lebanon’s coasts supplied wood for developing
treeless Egypt; the Black Sea coast yielded fish for Greek cities and centuries later
Croatian forests were felled to provide the piling for building Venice. These civilizations
also introduced new species as they colonized, changing landscapes, ecology and
patterns of sedimentation. And the new Phoenician communication technology of the
time – rapid writing on paper - was a key factor that enabled trading and economic
expansion (Fernandez-Armesto, 2001), just as IT and the internet continue to do today.
In Europe though, the Westward migration of peoples put more and more pressure on
coastal populations to seek new lands and resources. With much lower population
densities than today but poor technology, it is difficult to have a clear notion of just how
the level of exploitation of natural resources affected the resilience of natural and social
systems. But huge forest clearances occurred in the Bronze and Middle Ages that can
be traced in modern sediment records as soils were washed into streams and silted up
harbours. Coastal cities were developing and demanding resources from increasingly
further afield. On the coasts, lifestyles were probably becoming harder and people were
vulnerable to invasions, famine and disease. Migration during the age of discovery was
a combination of the “push” of competition for resources and land tenure - coupled with
rural and urban poverty - and the “pull” of promises of wealth to be acquired in other
lands and a certain amount of religious zeal. This new migratory urge seized the nations
of Atlantic Europe and they set out to sea and often fought for the rights to trade routes
to exploit distant lands. Part of the new wealth was used to create magnificent cities and
to reshape the entire coastline, most obviously in the low lying lands of The
Netherlands.
Trading and large-scale movement of people was not only a European phenomenon.
Ghanaian canoe fishermen travelled long distances in coastal Africa for example and
founded networks of communities to exploit fish stocks and trade fish. Some of these
have been interrupted relatively recently because of political boundaries resulting from
colonialism (Curran and Agardy, 2004). At the same time, these coasts were being
raided for slaves to serve European expansionism. It is almost incredible that 9.9 million
people were forced to leave Africa’s coasts as slaves between 1600 and 1870
(Giddens, 1993); a massive act of social engineering. In the coastal areas of every
continent huge social changes were taking place, often driven by distant forces that
soon began to overshadow local population movements and continue to do so today.
The industrial revolution provided further impetus for these changes and enabled rapid
population growth and the eventual development of major urban conglomerations in
which food production and waste disposal became disarticulated from people’s day-today realities. The coastal zone was the launch pad for the new global capitalism; a
development that required new port infrastructure, energy supplies and a burgeoning
service sector that relied on the continued success of the growth paradigm. It bore the
brunt of these demands for space and resources and continues to do so today. In
addition, from the late 19th century, people began to seek coastal destinations for
recreation and second homes; a massive tourism industry was born that is largely
predicated on the availability of cheap fossil fuel. It is hardly surprising that conflicts
emerged around the use of coastal space; there were too many demands on its
resources and too many divergent interests at stake. The overcrowded coastal zone
was also increasingly vulnerable to natural catastrophes such as the 2003 Tsunami in
Indonesia or Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. And to make matters worse,
governance structures had developed that tended to maintain the status quo rather than
to seek common goals within the constraints of the natural system.
Most modern coastal areas are shaped by the heavy footprint of humankind. Its current
projected mean population density - of almost 100 hab/km2 - is over 2.5 times the global
average (Crossland et al., 2005) and embraces 45% of the global population. There are
now some 3.1 billion people living in the 10% of land loosely defined by LOICZ
(Crossland et al., 2005) as the ‘coastal zone’, up by a staggering 765 million since
1990. But these figures belie some even starker realities because of the inhomogeneity
of human settlement; on one hand there are vast megalopolis cities perched on the
seashores throughout the world and on the other, coastal areas that appear to be
almost pristine, mostly because they are environments considered too harsh for people
to live in. But many of these remote and often fragile places are already becoming
heavily impacted by humans. The world’s driest deserts and coldest land areas are not
untouched. South of Walvis Bay in Namibia, for example, huge stretches of the
coastline have been reshaped by diamond mining on beaches and offshore; likewise
parts of the Atacama desert in Chile and Peru have new coastlines formed by toxic
copper mine tailings. Cities have grown in unlikely places where food and/or water are
in short supply; poverty-stricken Lima in Peru or super-rich Dubai both depend on
supplies from far afield. And on the pristine coasts of Greenland, gradually liberated
from ice by climate change, new mining developments and industries are already being
founded. Human existence in these places no longer depends on local circumstances
but on global markets, world economic order and sometimes by maintaining a gap
between the rich and the poor.
ICZM and Sustainability
Though impacted, many of the world’s coastal zones are not yet overwhelmed by
humans and realistic prospects remain for their successful local-scale management.
Integrated Coastal – Zone Management is a sincere attempt to achieve sustainability in
the coastal zone by achieving a consensus between stakeholders on problems affecting
their shared environment and agreed mechanisms for resolving them. As framed in the
conference in Charleston in 1989 that coined the term (Sorenson, 1993), it can be
defined as a: “dynamic process in which a coordinated strategy is developed and
implemented for the allocation of environmental, socio-cultural and institutional
resources to achieve the conservation and sustainable multiple use of the coastal
zone”. Since that time, a huge body of knowledge has developed on the subject, backed
up by academic research, pilot studies and new management tools, and articulated
through guidelines, policies and laws. ICZM advocates have levered investments from
national governments and international donors such as the World Bank in an attempt to
establish ICZM as a universal management practice and to train the necessary
managers.
Until quite recently, few authors have ventured critical appraisal of whether or not ICZM
is appropriate and effective as a means to achieve sustainability in the coastal zone.
Though there are many effective pilot studies, large scale evidence of success is quite
limited however. In the United States for example, a recent report concluded that one
quarter of coastal lands will be urbanised by 2025, up from 14% in 1997 (Beach, 2002).
The report commented that this was not entirely a result of population rise: “Runaway
land consumption, dysfunctional suburban development patterns, and exponential
growth in automobile use are the real engines of pollution and habitat degradation on
the coast”. Metadata studies have shown that coasts and estuaries throughout the world
are continuing to face habitat loss (Lotze et al. 2006). Offshore, a tragic decline in
coastal fisheries and associated ecosystems is unfolding in most parts of the world
(Roberts, 2007) and, despite some successes, it seems unlikely that the UN General
Assembly target will be reached to “complete the establishment of a comprehensive and
ecologically representative national and regional system of Marine Protected Areas by
2012” (UNGA Decision VII/28). Even if this target were to be met, there are legitimate
concerns about biodiversity in the areas not subject to protection; could this be a
“license to kill” elsewhere? Furthermore, there is evidence of “slipping baselines”;
difficulties to establish a workable public benchmark for tracking change, as each
generation has limited ecological memory (Hughes et al. 2005, Bunce et al. 2008).
Furthermore, regional and global issues increasingly impacting the coastal zone such
as eutrophication (Diaz and Rosenberg, 2008), the proliferation of invasive alien species
(Occhipinti-Ambrogi, 2007) and climate change effects have been unchecked in most
parts of the world.
Beyond the discussion of the consequences of human activities on the coastal zone,
there are some concerns regarding the effectiveness of the processes commonly
espoused for achieving ICZM and the objectives they pursue. Duarte et al. (2009) have
pointed out that there is often a fundamental misconception that a return to past
conditions is possible, a point that I will be taking up later in this paper. There have been
concerns about the difficulties of scaling up ICZM projects to the national scale (e.g. in
China by Lau, 2005). Furthermore, recent criticisms by Billé (2009) challenge what he
sees as a number or myths held by many specialists regarding the way ICZM is
practiced. In particular, he challenges the notion that problems can be resolved by
coordination alone and that this can be arranged by consultation and consensus
building. He casts doubts on the effectiveness of a single “coastal manager” and
questions the validity of assumptions that local communities are usually best equipped
to deliver ICZM. Finally, he challenges the notion that more scientific knowledge will
inevitably lead to better solutions for managing the coast. As Olsen (this volume) points
out, Billé’s insightful remarks seem to assume that most specialists really believe in the
myths he presents and this may be questionable. However, such challenges are timely;
there are clearly fundamental issues with governance that need to be addressed; ICZM
does not appear to be living up to its promise.
The present as a reflection of the past
In order to gain more insight of the nature of the problem, it is useful to examine some
case studies where there is a long history of human impact on the coastal zone. I will
start with a visit to Fujian (Fukien) in SW China in the tenth century. Fujian is a rainy
subtropical mountainous province with a narrow coastal zone. Wracked by typhoons
and vulnerable to malaria, it was hardly the best place for major human development
but, by the tenth century, it had already experienced two major arrivals of immigrants.
The initial wave, in the fourth century, was probably of refugees but, by the tenth
century, people were being attracted by the ‘trade of the South Seas’. Indeed Quanzhou
soon became the biggest seaport in the Eastern Hemisphere and it “was clogged with
foreign ships and their goods were piled like mountains” (Tu Shun 1060, quoted by
Fernández-Armesto, 2001). Indeed the whole rather inaccessible coast acquired an
almost mystical reputation for wealth and venture. But at the same time, the coastal
zone was a place of poverty; Liao Kang (1071-1143, quoted by Clarke, 1990) wrote
“The land of Fu-Chien is narrow and the people are crowded. There is no other place
where life is so difficult”. The province had also become dependent on food imports;
“people always worry when rice ships are late…” (Chou Pi-ta 1200, quoted by Clarke,
1990). The trading wealth also attracted predators and a combination of piracy, trade
restrictions and high taxes plunged the service economy into decline; in the 13th century
the population of the province fell by 50% and Quanzhou shrank from 112,000 to
21,700 people (Clarke, 1990).
Later on, in the Ming dynasty from the 13th to the 17th centuries, the Fujian province
went through major new cycles of boom and bust, all related to the dependency on
international trade and national regulation (sometimes triggering a dependency on illicit
activity). Unlike most Chinese entrepreneurs of the time, the Fujianese traders did not
invest in the land (which was mostly stony and poor); there was no expansion of
farmland and the population continued to rely on imported goods (Vermeer, 1990). The
whole economy depended on service functions but the population went through
massive expansion … and most of the money went elsewhere. Hindsight tells us that
this was obviously unsustainable but the pattern is still replicated across the modern
world.
Modern Fujian has also had a revival, but in the present case, ICZM has had a
significant role. The picturesque island port city of Xiamen Island was suffering
environmental decline in the decades before the 1990s because of the low priority given
to maintaining environmental quality. Inspired by success stories from other places and
remarkable local leadership, the local authorities embarked on a $47 M project to clean
up the Yuan Dang Lake in the centre of the city in 1986. Completion of the clean-up and
extension of the concept to the coastal area however, was a formidable challenge,
largely because of the number of sectors involved. The Integrated Coastal Management
(ICM) methodology offered by a Global Environment Facility regional project enabled
the development of the processes and structures necessary to bring the parties together
and resolve their conflicts of interest (Chua et al. 1997). Over the 10 year period since
Xiamen’s selection as a demonstration site in 1994, there was a dramatic change in the
relationship between this city of 2 million people and its marine environment. The
Deputy Major leads a ‘marine management coordination group’ of 23 key sectors;
strong local by-laws have been developed; a zoning scheme adopted; a marine
management office with a ‘supervisory force’ has been created and national
investments of over $60 M made in waste-water treatment and the remedial measures.
There is genuine pride in the city regarding these achievements and tangible
improvements to environmental quality. The cleaner and landscaped waterfronts attract
larger numbers of tourists and waterfront housing prices have risen. Careful use of
zoning has enabled schemes to protect or restore the habitats of endangered egrets,
lancelets and white dolphins in the bay (the population has dwindled to around 100
individuals). Considerable local benefits are emerging.
Although the Xiamen story is remarkable, there are even more daunting challenges
ahead (Mee et al. 2004). Further major improvements in the marine environment cannot
be made without the participation of the five neighbouring cities that share its
catchment. Estuarine nutrient concentrations for example, have seen little improvement
since 1996 and there were four ‘red tides’ (harmful algal blooms – HABs) in 2003 alone.
Solid waste continues to affect the harbour despite over 95% treatment in the
municipality and bathers are advised to swim on flood tides, partly because of untreated
effluents from other cities. Xiamen has begun complex negotiations with its neighbours
and has even financed preliminary work in partnership with at least one of them.
Upscaling the ICM project to a catchment management project is a difficult task
however and will require a different approach with many more stakeholders involved.
Is the current economic success of Xiamen a return to the prosperity of the past? It has
contributed to a recent local annual per capita GDP growth of 18%; partly due to a shift
from a production to a service based economy. During the marine zoning process, it
was decided to move the inherently polluting aquaculture farms out of the western
estuary, replacing them with a mix of leisure areas and port development. This resulted
in a considerable improvement in water quality and economic return. The port now
handles 2.3 million containers annually, ranking it amongst the 30 largest container
ports in the world. By 2004, local economists estimated the overall net present value of
the benefits of improvement of the Western Sea Area as $655 millions (cumulative
since 2001) and the overall value of Xiamen’s ocean industry (all uses) as about $1.4
billions (20% of GDP) (reported in Mee, 2004). The growing affluence and increased
tourism is inevitably creating a greater demand for seafood (sold in huge waterfront
restaurants) - largely satisfied by the same aquaculture industry that has been moved
away from the city. The human footprint of the city has, in effect, been extended to other
parts of China and in many ways this dependency on money and food from the outside
marks a return to the situation in the tenth and seventeenth centuries; a failure of
tourism or global trade could cause a collapse in Xiamen’s economy.
Human footprints of major cities appear to occupy the entire coastal area of China
constraining further growth and presenting a major threat to biological diversity. Huge
harmful algal blooms regularly reported in May 2004 along the NE coast of China may
be evidence of this problem. Attempts to scale up the success stories in Xiamen and
Shanghai to a national level have not been successful (Lau, 2005) and this may be due
to the difficulties of equating local priorities with those that would lead to larger scale
sustainability.
Problems of scale are not limited to highly populated landscapes such as China. On the
other side of the planet, the western Atlantic seaboard of Scotland is one of the least
inhabited regions of Europe. Denuded of much of its forests by medieval times, its open
landscapes supported a scattered population of tenant smallholders (‘crofters’ as they
are known locally) on large private estates. Some crofters gathered stranded seaweed
to fertilise their poor acidic soil. This was a tough subsistence economy and generated
meagre profits for the landowners. In the late 18th century, they began to convert their
lands to sheep farming and began a process of clearance of the tenant population from
the land, persuading – and sometimes forcing – many of them to migrate, firstly to the
coast and then onwards to Canada and the USA (Ascherson, 2002). Some
entrepreneurs saw a local opportunity in this movement and began to use the available
labour force to harvest seaweed and burn it to produce ‘soda ash’ (sodium carbonate),
a primary ingredient of glass. This unpleasant and strenuous process brought a new
source of income to the work force and landowners but the entire activity declined
abruptly in the 1820s due to the opening of potash mines in Germany; a cheaper source
of raw materials (Flora Celtica, 2009). There were brief revivals in industrial seaweed
use; for iodine in the late 19th Century and alginates in the mid 20th century, but each
time the industry foundered when cheaper supplies became available. The initial decline
of the seaweed industry precipitated further migration and entire islands became
uninhabited through the ‘push’ of poverty and the ‘pull’ of alternative lifestyles abroad or
in industrialised cities. The thriving fishing industry of the 19th century also underwent
boom and bust development and production is now a shadow of the past.
Modern Atlantic Scotland has a different mix of economic activities to support its small
population: tourism is a relatively stable but seasonal activity and salmon and shellfish
aquaculture is a major industry. The emergence of offshore renewable energy (wind,
tidal stream and waves) offer real perspectives for economic growth and the
Government is embarking on new legislation for marine spatial planning (including
coastal zone management) to enable these activities and fishing to coexist and to
protect natural habitats. But their future still depends on processes occurring at other
scales. The profit margin for salmon farming is sensitive to the price of fishmeal, largely
from Peru, a commodity that has seen a huge price increase because of competition for
the resource from China. And the salmon market itself is sensitive to issues of supply
and demand that cannot be controlled by the local population. Similarly for tourism, the
demand is partly dependent on the price of fossil fuel; lower prices give increased
opportunities for cheap air travel to destinations with a more reliable climate. And like
Fujian, the coastal population of Scotland relies on imported food that has to be paid for
by activities that may be inherently unsustainable.
These two examples serve to illustrate the complex nature of issues in the coastal zone
and the fact that these are not entirely new developments; there is a long legacy of
‘boom and bust’ but we appear to have learned little from it as we rush headlong for
global economic growth. Effective adaptive management must begin by taking the ‘long
view’ and learning the lessons of the past.
System scales in a modern world
There are some major differences between today’s coastal issues and those of the past:
•
Because of a legacy from the past (behaviour that we have done little to correct),
we have interfered with the earth’s climate, habitats and biological diversity,
seriously endangering its ability to provide ecosystem services.
•
Social and economic drivers of coastal problems are increasingly regional and
global in scale and the local population may not be able to influence them.
•
Vulnerability of coastal regions is increasing; not simply vulnerability to natural
catastrophes but also to the often irrational behaviour of virtually unregulated
world markets.
•
As the world’s population expands, migration from impacted areas is no longer a
tenable solution; the only undeveloped coastal areas are in relatively
inhospitable climates and human populations in these regions are unlikely to be
self-sufficient.
These conclusions are somewhat depressing but we need to understand the realities of
a globalised society and look at coastal systems on our planet with the benefit of a
“macroscope” if we are to achieve sustainability. But human beings may have two fatal
flaws; a reluctance to prioritise action on long-term risks and an almost unquestioning
belief in technological fixes. These two flaws operate in tandem; we do little to stem
global change because there is a belief that technology will fix the problem despite the
limited evidence that it really will. True innovation will require us to embrace complexity
and precaution and not expect the ‘magic bullet’.
A useful starting point could be to develop a framework of juxtaposed temporal and
geographical scales. A starting point could be:
(1) The local scale where the human drivers and pressures on coastal systems and
their environmental consequences are entirely within the loosely defined
boundaries of the coastal zone;
(2) The regional scale, where the drivers and pressures are in physical or political
catchments adjacent to the coastal zone. A good example would be the
discharge of nutrients into rivers (from agriculture, domestic and industrial
sources) that cause eutrophication that impacts coastal welfare.
(3) The global scale, where the drivers are distant from their environmental
consequences. This may include remote markets, financial institutions, regulators
and transport systems.
(4) The legacy of the past, where social and economic activities that have already
occurred are impacting coupled social and ecological systems in present times.
These ‘locked-in’ pressures include such things as greenhouse gases,
agrochemicals (including nutrients) held in soils and aquifers, hard structures
built in coastal zones that are not economically feasible to remove in the short
term and populations displaced to serve a particular economic activity.
I have purposely chosen a hierarchy that begins with problems that are tractable locally
and ends with issues that cannot be managed. Unfortunately, almost every issue faced
by coastal stakeholders is driven by more than one of these scales. Take the issue of
mangrove loss in countries like Thailand and Cambodia, for example. Mangroves are
cut to supply firewood and building material for local people (local driver), to supply
charcoal to neighbouring countries (regional driver) or for the rayon industry in Japan
(regional driver/global markets). More significantly, they have been cleared for housing
(local) and shrimp aquaculture (local entrepreneurs, national economic policy and global
market forces, Barbier and Cox, 2002) and their future may be compromised by
unsustainable activities in the past and sea level rise from global climate change. Local
action to protect mangroves may be insufficient to override ‘free riding’ of the
environment by global drivers; global schemes such as accreditation of “mangrove
friendly” products could provide a way forward but this would be outside the scope of
ICZM. If complex issues are to be tackled, it will be important to understand the
processes driving them and to ensure that governance mechanisms are appropriate for
the scales on which they occur.
Is ICZM a useful tool?
It is difficult to achieve long term sustainability without understanding and modifying the
economic and social drivers that ultimately lead to pressures on the environment,
resultant environmental degradation (state changes) and impacts on the welfare of local
people (Turner et al. 1998). Local short-term ‘end of pipe’ solutions may reduce
environmental pressures, ecosystem engineering may mitigate environmental damage
and impacted stakeholders may be compensated but these ‘fixes’ all incur costs that
may be difficult to cover without shifts in national and international economic policies.
ICZM should be useful as a tool for local-level planning and management providing that
expectations given to stakeholders are realistic. It cannot solve problems that are driven
from regional or global scales and it is important to communicate this. On the other
hand, it is also useful as a tool to facilitate the process of adaptation; helping coastal
communities to ‘face the inevitable’. Adaptation has major ethical and moral undertones
however. What should coastal people do about globally-driven issues that can still be
tackled by concerted international action although there is no evidence to suggest that
this is happening effectively? Should they be planning an adaptation strategy? I will not
attempt to answer this question.
The actual/potential role of ICZM is presented in Table 1. The table employs the
hierarchy of drivers presented earlier and illustrates the role that ICZM can play. It also
illustrates some of the alternatives that can be applied at each scale. The main points
that this table makes are:
(1) ICZM is useful for limiting the consequences of local economic and social drivers
and for adaptation to pressures on the environment that are a legacy of the past.
It is inappropriate as a tool for dealing with regional and global drivers and
pressures however.
(2) There are a number of alternative management frameworks for working at a
regional scale (e.g. integrated catchment management) that are needed for
tackling issues at that scale.
(3) Global scale drivers are currently the most intractable and there are few (if any)
success stories for managing them. As the importance of these drivers
increases, so does the need for effective global-scale policies and governance.
Is there a ‘Plan B’?
It would be naïve to expect simple solutions to most of the complex problems facing the
world’s coastal zones and the notion of an ICZM ‘cook book’ could be regarded as yet
Table 1. Application of ICZM for problems driven a different spatial and temporal scales.
Driver Scale
Temporal
scale
Relevance of
ICZM as a
curative and
preventative
tool
Relevance of ICZM
for adaptation to
regional/global
change
Available
alternative policy
tools
Comments
Local (within the
coastal zone)
Present
High
Low; local
stakeholders should
be in control
Authoritarian
administration: a
normative society
The geographic scope of
ICZM policies and
legislation varies
considerably.
Regional (within
adjacent
catchments or
sea areas)
Present
Low
Low/medium; local
stakeholders should
have a say in larger
scale issues
Integrated
catchment
management;
ecosystem based
management (e.g.
of large marine
ecosystems)
Global
Present
None
High; local people
need to make
pragmatic decisions
on how to adapt to
changes
Global-scale
policies and
conventions,
mostly negotiated
through the UN
Acceptance of the need for
coastal systems to adapt to
global drivers is
controversial and ethically
contestable.
Legacy of the
past (various
geographical
scales)
Past
None
Very high;
adaptation is the
only effective
strategy
None
Current greenhouse gas
emissions are, to some
extent ‘locked in’ by an
insufficiency of alternatives.
another attempt at the ‘magic bullet’. Adaptive Management however, is a paradigm
that embraces complexity and can make use of all information, including the historical
‘long view’ to work towards sustainability. This approach was conceived by Hollings
(1978), Taken up again nearly two decades later (e.g. Walters, 1997), it has recently
been ‘mainstreamed’ into emerging environmental policy in many parts of the world
(e.g. in Europe; Mee, 2005). The principle is quite simple: Management of complex
social and ecological systems is viewed as an experiment where the outcomes are not
entirely predictable. Measureable long term system goals are set by society
(stakeholders) on the basis of all available knowledge (historical, traditional, scientific)
and by simulations of how the system may respond to social and economic drivers and
pressures in the future under different management scenarios. Then the stakeholders
agree on the first practical measures that can be taken towards achieving these goals
and on how their achievement will be monitored. It is not necessary to plan the whole
sequence of measures to get to the long-term goals; the first step works as an
experiment from which lessons can be learned to plan the next step. As knowledge is
gathered by the process of ‘learning by doing’, each subsequent step can be more
clearly defined and is likely to receive more support from the stakeholders involved.
Furthermore, the new knowledge may lead the stakeholders to refine the long term
system goals themselves.
Adaptive management implemented in the way encourages innovation and does not
assume that everything is known about how complex coupled social and ecological
systems operate. It does not presume that conditions are ever likely to return to their
past state (particularly unlikely with population change, extinctions and the
‘globalisation’ of opportunistic species; see Duarte et al 2009). Furthermore, it does not
prescribe what measures will be taken, and these can be designed in the social and
economic context of the system. It does have some pitfalls however. The first is that the
long term goals may be timid and promote a ‘slipping baseline’; this is why great care
must be taken to use all available historical information and to model alternative future
scenarios. Secondly, many authorities (and scientists) find it difficult to move outside
their particular silo and tend to think in a linear way (McLain and Lee, 1996), often in the
guise of what they term as an ‘evidence-based approach’. This often means that they
will not take any measure that does not have linearly defined outcomes and would
certainly not agree to a long term target toward which there is no concrete pathway. The
third risk is that monitoring information will not be gathered, thus jeopardizing the entire
learning process (Mee, 2005).
It is encouraging to observe the gradual acceptance of Adaptive Management as a
dominant paradigm in new policies such as the EU Marine Strategy Framework
Directive or in the projects funded through the US$2Bn International Waters Focal Area
of the Global Environment Facility. By embracing complexity, learning and innovation,
and offering a pragmatic approach to goal setting, it could be a valuable tool in the
quest for sustainability.
Conclusions
Much of this paper has been written in the beautiful Cape St. Vincent National Park in
Portugal on the southwestern corner of Europe. Like the Costa del Sol in neighbouring
Spain (and similar places throughout the world), much of the rest of the southern coast
has been densely urbanised and its original ecological functions curtailed. Even in the
Park, the cliff face is dotted with anglers and at the foot of the cliffs fishermen in wetsuits
comb the rocks for goose barnacles. The park tries to regulate angling but the
regulations are unpopular because just a short distance from the coast gill nets and long
lines are deployed to catch the same species of fish in large quantities. I began part of
this paper by talking about evolution in coastal ecotones but I wonder if there are
enough coastal habitats left for such evolutionary processes to occur in the modern
world.
Coastal zones throughout the world have been subjected to boom and bust
development for centuries but the historical response of population migration to other
coastal sites is no longer a viable option. Furthermore, the economic and social drivers
causing their environmental decline are increasingly globalised; a point that has been
starkly revealed in the current global economic recession. This complex mismatch of
scales is one of the reasons that ICZM has had limited success, though it is not the only
reason. There are also issues with the way the process has been interpreted, often with
soft recommendations and guidelines and unclear overall goals. The time has come to
take a fresh look at the future of our coastal zones, balancing economic development,
conservation and adaptation to inevitable change. Reexamination of system scales and
adoption of an Adaptive Management approach offers real perspectives for finding a
way forward.
In order to find solutions to these very complex issues, considerable work will be
needed in four key areas: (1) Innovation: finding new methods and solutions (that also
permit positive adaptation); (2) Horizon scanning: developing and applying
methodologies for exploring future scenarios; (3) Scales: understanding the scales for
critical change; and (4) Governance: how to move from good intentions to tangible
outcomes. These themes formed the branches of the LOICZ Oslo workshop upon which
the fruits of collective knowledge and wisdom have been growing, offering a message of
hope for a sustainable future.
Acknowledgements
As indicated in the previous section, much of this paper was written at a meeting in the
Cape St Vincent National Park where the theme coordinators for the Oslo Workshop
were the guests of Alice Newton and John Icely. Their hospitality and valuable
discussions are appreciated. Helpful revisions and suggestions by Ruth Brennan are
also acknowledged.
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