Integrated Coastal Management

Effectively managing human pressure on costal resources is, and will continue to be for the foreseeable future, a challenge for government, industry, NGOs, and people living in these zones. Appropriate policies, laws, regulations and institutions are needed to protect coastal lands, watersheds, estuaries, reefs and other vital resources. The ME&A Team has the technical knowledge, experience, and creativity to address these challenges and produce measurable and sustainable corrective results.

The ME&A Team's experience in ICM issues stems from work on a variety of issues including “commons” management, coastal infrastructure, coastal tourism, coastal zone management, aquaculture development and implementation, and park and refuge development. The four examples discussed below, which we believe will increase in concern over the coming decade, show the breadth of problems faced by people in coastal nations.

Management of the commons. The “commons tragedy” resonates more now than when first described in 1968. As nations hungry for fish move further afield, the pressure increases on once-fertile fishing grounds of small coastal communities. In many cases, fishermen, described as “foreign” are only from another of their own country's provinces or municipalities, not a foreign land. With little interest in the longevity and care of the fishery, non-local fishermen focus on maximizing yield, sometimes using methods such as dynamite, cyanide, or muro-ami, which have extensive negative impacts on both the fishery and habitat. Whether the problem is local or foreign incursions, commons problems will require creative use of legislative, institutional, legal, social, economic, and technical approaches to address this complex issue.

Examples of commons problems include coral and sand mining in many coastal areas to support booming construction activities. The tragedy here is two-fold, not only are reefs demolished to provide block for construction, and bottom topography altered to gather sand, but since the sand and coral have been saturated in seawater, they are among the most inferior materials available for construction. Another example is the increasing use of cage fish culture in shallow tropical waters. The waste from these operations often causes algal blooms that negatively impact nearby habitat.

Rising sea levels. Many coastal nations like the Seychelles, Sri Lanka, and the island CariCom are concerned about what they perceive as a rise in local sea level in the past 20 years. Many countries are reporting loss of coastal areas to sea encroachment. To address this problem, Bangladesh has begun planning for a dike construction program. At least one island-nation has reportedly attempted to move its population to higher ground by purchasing a new island. Other countries are in the process of designing extensive dikes and developing effective methods to measure the actual sea level rise. While it is easy to see this only as an engineering problem, there are many dimensions to this issue, which range from identifying new livelihoods for coastal populations to managing coastal zones through extremely dynamic changes. All of these issues are integrated and need a synthesis that allows for understanding and responding to the dynamics of the situation.

Water-related disasters. Preparing for, responding to, and recovering from water-related disasters is of significant interest to many countries ranging from Romania to Honduras . Coastal and island-nations that lack effective early storm detection and warning systems bear a disproportionate burden when they are struck by hurricanes and typhoons. Problems are compounded by poor infrastructure, understanding of risks, and inadequate planning. In addition to the death and injury of vulnerable populations from flooding, mudslides, and wind-born objects, widespread physical destruction is common along coastlines with attendant biophysical impacts on coastal aquaculture installations and damage to ports. The social, economic, institutional, and political issues associated with recovery can be very burdensome both at the micro and macro levels. Nations are now attempting to develop storm prediction, monitoring, and warning systems as part of an effort to better manage water-related disaster issues.

Honduras and the Dominican Republic are examples of countries that could have benefited from a hurricane warning and shelter system similar to the one Bangladesh installed with USAID help in the early 1990's. People from both Caribbean countries suffered terribly in part because of the limited warning and in part because there were no safe places to shelter. Similar examples from Africa and other parts of Asia and Latin America are common.

Coastal integrity. Managing coastal integrity includes minimizing deleterious impacts and maximizing situations where coasts can function in their most natural manner. Humans have continual impacts on coasts whether by discharge of effluents from upstream dams, mining coral or sand, cutting mangrove forests, fishing, or development of ports, hotels, or aquaculture operations. In the past 10 years, nations have realized that many of these actions, which often are taken in the name of economic growth, actually have had significant negative impacts. Assuring that coastal integrity is preserved involves including all actors in the discussions and the decisions, from the poorest who make their living gathering shells, to commercial, conservation, business, and government interests. Technical solutions will only work if the concerns of all stakeholders are addressed and satisfactory compromises can be made. Where coastal areas receive inputs from watersheds, feedback occurs between the two systems in estuaries, which are among the richest sources of food for coastal inhabitants and play a crucial role the reproduction of large numbers of important fish and invertebrate species. Environmental and other problems that begin in the watershed will often be magnified in the estuary, sometimes causing significant impacts to the people who live there and their environment. Many times the impact is so divorced in time or space from the incident that people are not always able to point to a culprit. Nevertheless, being able to identify the policy, institutional, and technological solutions for the problem is crucial if it is to be managed sustainably. The ME&A Team has the technical know-how and hands-on experience to develop sustainable solutions to these problems.

Increasing and Improving Natural Resources

Integrated Coastal Management

AREAS OF EXPERTISE