Coastal Zone Management Handbook

John R. Clark, John R. Clark

• Publisher: CRC Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351459945
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

Coastal Zone Management Handbook comprises the first complete manual on coastal resource planning and management technology. Written by an international consultant, this handbook reflects a global perspective on the natural resources, sensitivities, economics, development, productivity, and diversity of coastal zones. The emphasis is on tropical and subtropical coastal ecosystems, but the information is widely applicable. In addition to its comprehensive coverage of general concepts related to coastal regions, the book describes the strategic basis for coastal management, provides a set of working tools for management and planning activities, and presents case histories of management projects around the globe. Extensive references are provided for each management analysis, practice, technique, and solution.
Coastal Zone Management Handbook is made up of four sections:

PART 1

Management Strategies

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Part 1 presents the process of integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) by describing environmental impacts that need to be controlled and by outlining the variety of available methods. The methods underlie major program aspects such as management solutions, strategy planning, master plan creation, and program development. Part 1 thus provides a framework within which conservation of coastal resources can be accomplished.

Coastal zones are unique. Such things as daily tides, mangrove forests, coral reefs, tidal flats, sea beaches, storm waves, and barrier islands are found only at the coast. Because of these features and because coastal enterprise is also distinctive, most countries recognize the coastal zone as a distinct region with resources that require special attention. In all but the larger coastal settlements, the coastal location creates distinctively maritime cultures.

The transitional strip of land and sea that straddles the coastline contains some of the most productive and valuable habitats of the biosphere, including estuaries, lagoons, coastal wetlands, and fringing coral reefs. It is also a place of natural dynamism where huge amounts of natural energy are released and a great abundance of life is nurtured. It is a place of high priority interest to people, to commerce, to the military, and to a variety of industries. Because it contains dense populations, the coast undergoes great environmental modification and deterioration through landfill, dredging, and pollution caused by urban, industrial, and agricultural development.

The land can strongly affect the sea. Impacts on coastal ecosystems from terrestrial activity include industrial and agricultural pollution; siltation from eroded uplands; filling to provide sites for industry, housing, recreation, airports, and farmland; dredging to create, deepen, and improve harbors; quarrying; and the excessive cutting of mangroves for fuel. The impacts affect community security (from seastorms), tourism revenues, biological diversity, and natural resources abundance.

Where fisheries are important for food and income, the effects of pollution and the physical destruction of habitats can be crucial, particularly for those species depending on coastal wetlands and shallow nearcoast waters for breeding and nurturing of their young. In many parts of the world, the construction of dams has blocked the passage of marine species migrating to inland spawning sites.

The coastal area, or coastal zone, is defined by Sorenson and McCreary (326) as the interface or transition zone, specifically “that part of the land affected by its proximity to the sea and that part of the ocean affected by its proximity to the land … an area in which processes depending on the interaction between land and sea are most intense.” But it must be noted that the border between land and sea is not fixed—it changes daily with the tides, with the moon stages, seasonally with astronomic forces, and sporadically with seastorms and great river floods.

The coastal zone may be drawn wide or narrow in order to meet program goals. For example, it could embrace a wide band of shorelands or a quite narrow strip. It can include coastal islands and the shallower nearshore coastal waters, but it could in some cases extend to the outer edge of the continental shelf.

But the coastal zone always includes the intertidal and supratidal zones of the water’s edge that include coastal floodplains, mangroves, marshes, and tideflats, as well as beaches and dunes and fringing coral reefs. This is the place where agency 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 the place where terrestrial-type planning and resource management programs are at their weakest. It is the core of the coastal zone.

Seaward from the tidal limit, the coastal waters are a “commons” (in nearly all countries) and have been for millennia, as per the Institutes of Justinian 2.1.1, (158): “By the law of nature these things are common to mankind—the air, running water, the sea and consequently the shores of the sea.” This commons, which is always under central governmental authority, is often the main focus of attention in coastal resources conservation.

Most governments have some variety of environmental, resource management, and development control programs. These may include pollution control, natural hazards management, biodiversity maintenance, environmental assessment, wetlands protection, and so forth. But these programs are typically operated by a variety of agencies and are uncoordinated, with the result that each agency goes its own way, disregarding the others. Nor is there much coordination with various private sector enterprises or with the recognized non-government organizations (NGOs). This non-coordinated and non-integrated situation is inefficient at solving coastal zone problems.

For these reasons many tropical countries are now working out special integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) strategies, and some have already begun to adopt such programs. ICZM establishes a process whereby government intervention can be organized, informed, and effective through programs that are integrated with the various economic sectors and resource conservation programs. The advantage of the ICZM (multiple use) approach over the traditional sectoral (single use) approach is that it provides a framework for broad participation and for resolution of conflicts between a variety economic development and resource conservation needs (28).

Economic development planners, particularly, must recognize that modification of the land area (e.g., land clearing and grading) has a high potential for adverse effects on lagoon, estuarine, and littoral resource systems. It follows that ICZM must address land modification activities, principally those associated with site preparation for development (84).

The distinctive feature of an ICZM program is the fact that it is multi-sectoral and that it seeks to integrate or coordinate activities of existing users. Such efforts have significant political and managerial dimensions. They also have significant legal and managerial dimensions in that an ICZM program must have jurisdictional scope and a clear legal track if it is not to run immediately into conflict with existing jurisdictional powers.

Indeed, it could be argued that the failure or refusal of many countries to adopt an integrated approach to coastal zone management is precisely because of the difficulties of disturbing the plethora of institutions that already regulate activities in coastal areas. But an integrated approach is always preferable, whether accomplished through ICZM or by other means (134).

In narrow sectoral planning it is easy to irreversibly destroy a resource and foreclose future options for use of that resource. ICZM attempts to avoid this for coastal area resources by broad multiple-sector planning and project development, by future-oriented resource analysis, and by applying the test of sustainability to each development initiative. In no other part of the earth is integrated, multi-sectoral, resource planning and management more needed than at the coast.

In the future, more government intervention in development and resource conservation will be needed because of the complex management issues that are emerging in the coastal commons: the growth in coastal populations and the social demands that will arise; industrial development; increasing pressure on the coast to supply seafood, tourism revenue, and other needs; and the intense competition and conflicts that come with coastal area crowding. A balanced approach to government intervention in coastal management is needed.

In summary, ICZM is a unitary program—it has to both manage development and conserve natural resources and, while so doing, it has to integrate the concerns of all relevant sectors of society and of the economy. Also it is most important that coastal economic development be generated for the people of a country, not just for those who are already rich and powerful.

1.2 MANAGEMENT GOALS AND PURPOSES

As planners sort out the problems, opportunities, and issues of the coastal zone, those which most naturally fall under an ICZM-type program 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 program, improving its efficiency, and guaranteeing the greatest benefit to coastal communities through equitable sharing of resources.

To provide an example, the following problems were identified by the Philippines government as those to be addressed in an ICZM-type program (234):

• Natural resources degradation: (a) beach erosion: (b) conversion of mangrove swamplands into other land uses: (c) landfill or reclamation of foreshore areas; (d) dynamite fishing; (e) overfishing; and (f) overexploitation of mangrove forests.

• Pollution: (a) industrial sources (industrial waste); (b) domestic sources (household wastes and solid wastes); (c) agricultural sources (pesticide and fertilizer runoff): and (d) other sources (dredging activities).

• Land use conflicts: (a) absence of access to foreshore lands due to human settlements encroachment; (b) unusable beach areas due to excessive pollution; and (c) conservation and preservation of mangrove areas versus conversion of the same into fishponds, or reclamation of the same for human settlements and commercial purposes.

• Destruction of life and property by natural hazards: (a) flooding due to storms; (b) earthquakes; (c) tropical cyclones, and (d) tsunamis.

While it should be efficient to organize a comprehensive ICZM-type program to solve this array of problems, many countries are now at the single-purpose level of management where different agencies have jurisdiction over different resources or development activities. This often results in a lack of intersectoral coordination, key information, intergovernmental liaison, support or political will from the top, and professional resources (326). Such difficulties can be eased by an ICZM coordinating and integrating approach.

The linkages 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 include both dryside (land) and wetside (water) components and that they should be managed together is considered fundamental. Therefore, the planning boundaries for coastal zone planning and management are set to encompass dryside problem areas as well as wetside ones.

There are several driving forces and areas of misunderstanding that can be identified among ICZM-related issues. For example, Chua and White (55) list the following:

• high rates of population growth;

• poverty exacerbated by dwindling resources, degraded fisheries habitats and lack of alternative livelihoods;

• large-scale, quick-profit, commercial enterprises that degrade resources and conflict with interests of the local people;

• lack of awareness about management for sustainability among local people and policy makers;

• lack of understanding of the economic contribution of coastal resources to society; and

• lack of serious government follow-up in support and enforcement of conservation programs.

The technology by which to counter these forces and guarantee sustainability of coastal resources, as well as the method for its application, is available and is the subject of this book.

1.2.1 SUSTAINABLE USE OF RESOURCES

Ecologically, impacts from any uncontrolled development activity located anywhere near coastal areas—in watersheds, floodplains, wetlands, tidelands, or water basins—have the potential to deplete...