Chapter 4 Major coastal management and planning techniques A wide range of techniques is commonly used in coastal management and planning. They can be used individually to address specific problems, combined to address more complex issues, or used as part of a coastal management plan. The number is enormous, and effectively covers all the techniques available for the management of the natural environment, urban centres and systems of government. In order to narrow down the range of choice we have selected the coastal planning and management techniques which are the most common and/ or important to assist in the sustainable development of coastal areas. They include those used today, such as policy, and Environmental Impact Assessment, and those emerging techniques which are being used in some coastal nations and whose application we believe will expand in the future. These techniques include the application of customary (traditional and indigenous) management practices and visual analysis techniques. Though we have chosen to focus on the most important techniques, the number is still relatively large, meaning that the description of each will be necessarily broad. Nevertheless, each section describing a technique is structured to allow an introduction to the main factors important in its application to coastal planning and management, and is illustrated through the use of case studies. Sources of further reference are given throughout to enable additional detail on each technique to be readily obtained. The major techniques are grouped into administrative, social and technical. This grouping is undertaken to highlight the similarity between some techniques, while showing the differences between others. This grouping is useful if at times somewhat artificial in that there are techniques which contain elements of more than one group. For example, Environmental Impact Assessment is a government process, a technical procedure, and also involves social components. As in previous chapters, case studies are used to demonstrate the application of each technique to actual coastal management problems and issues. Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group 4.1 Administrative Governments can assist in improving the management of coastal areas in a variety of ways: by encouragement, through force or through the use of research and information. Approaches include the use of policies or general guidelines, or much more targeted means such as the enforcement of regulations or the issuing of permits and licenses. Increasingly, a softer, less authoritarian approach than emphasizing coastal management problems is being taken using education and training programmes. 4.1.1 Policy and legislation ‘Policy’ and ‘legislation’ are two words easily recognized by the public. When managers or politicians announce the passing of new policy or a new piece of legislation it is a visible sign that the coast has a high priority for decision makers. And depending on their implementation and enforcement powers, policy and legislation can be powerful tools for managing the coast. Policy and legislation as described in this section are used by most coastal nations, but in different combinations and to varying degrees. To a large extent this reflects economic, cultural and political circumstances and also the length of time coastal programmes have been active. In some cases it reflects the maturity of a nation’s coastal planning initiatives. As will be shown through case studies, coastal programmes, especially in developed countries, have tended to evolve through early controlling stages founded on policy or legislative control (government dominated) into communicative and participatory stages where education and other techniques dominate. Indeed, such evolution in coastal programmes in many cases cannot take place without first establishing a clear set of operating parameters, often established through policy and/or legislation. (a) Policy Politicians, administrators and managers often cite ‘policy’ as a basis for decision making. But what exactly is policy? A useful generic definition is ‘purposive course of action followed by an actor…in dealing with a problem’ (Anderson et al., 1984). Policy is about guiding decisions (Figure 4.1), specifically about decisions regarding choices between alternative courses of action (Colebatch, 1993). Policy therefore is deeply rooted in decision-making processes and hence is interwoven within the mechanics of organizational behaviour—public and private, large and small. Consequently, there is a risk that analysis of policies in coastal planning and management becomes no more than sweeping generalizations for Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group looking at the way in which decision-making processes operate. As described by Davis et al. (1993, p. 7) in the Australian governmental context: The idea of ‘public policy’ works on a range of levels. It can simply mean a written document expressing intent on a particular issue, or imply a whole process in which values, interests and resources compete through institutions to influence government action. Nevertheless, the importance of policy to the effective management of the coast is so important that such an analysis must be undertaken here. In this section policy will be linked wherever possible to other chapters where government processes are discussed, most notably Chapter 3. Policies important in the management of the coast can broadly be divided into public policy (that is, the policies of government agencies and their staff) and non-public policy. The latter refers to the polices of all organizations not part of the public sector, and their staff—including private businesses, non-governmental organizations and community groups. In practice, there is little or no difference between the concepts of policy development and implementation between the public and the non-public, but the distinction allows the extensive literature on public policy, most notably from the United States (e.g. House and Shull, 1988; Considine, 1994), to be divided from that on policies in the private sector (Christensen, 1982). The broad notion of policy described above shares common elements with the general definition of planning adopted in Chapter 3, the most important being that both planning and policy assist in setting some conscious course of action. There is no distinct boundary between planning and policy formulation; indeed, in some cases coastal plans may be considered as spatially oriented policies. Policies attempt to steer a course of action by deliberately affecting decision making; planning Figure 4.1 Policy and discretion in guiding decision making (adapted from Mukhi et al., 1988). Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group Box 4.1 National-level coastal policy and planning in Australia and New Zealand An interesting contrast between the use of ‘policy’ and ‘plan’ in developing national actions on coastal management is shown by the difference between Australia and New Zealand. Both nations have developed national approaches; Australia between 1993 and 1995 and New Zealand between 1991 and 1994. The Australian Federal Government chose to describe its policy as ‘Living on the Coast: The Commonwealth Coastal Policy (1995)’ but to describe its implementation jointly with State and Territory Governments as the ‘National Coastal Action Plan’. In New Zealand the ‘New Zealand Coastal Policy Statement’ (1994) contained a number of well defined policy statements and expanded on the requirement of a framework of regional coastal plans (see Box 5.14). In both Australia and New Zealand, national-level coastal policy statements were used to establish a national coastal planning framework. Again, in each case the policy statements use many planning elements, such as the use of guiding statements. Examples of regional coastal planning initiatives in both Australia and New Zealand are described in Chapter 5. attempts to do the same. Both attempt to produce structured, deliberate and consistent decisions by first clearly stating objectives, then actions in order to achieve those objectives. In practice, the similarities between policy and planning increase as the geographic coverage of each increases. At the national and international level especially, coastal management plans and policies provide guidance as to how decisions are made—generally there is discretion to allow decisions to be made at regional and/or local level. At this level of planning the difference between planning and policy can become merely semantic, and does not necessarily reflect true differences in approach. This language difference is shown by the terminology chosen by the neighbouring countries of Australia and New Zealand shown in Box 4.1. A useful way of describing policy in coastal management is through the terms ‘expressed’ and ‘implied’ policy used in business management (Mukhi et al., 1988): Expressed policies are written or oral statements that provide decision makers with information that helps them choose among alternatives. Implied polices are not directly voiced or written. They lie within the established pattern of decisions. Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group The use of expressed policies in coastal management is widespread. Coastal programmes, for example, may choose to specify a set of general statements of policy (Box 4.1). Such policies may operate at a range of geographic scales, from international to local. They can have a broad range of applications, and degrees of prescriptiveness. Examples or policies developed for the Sri Lankan coastal management programme (Table 4.1) demonstrate one possible range of application. A further example of expressed policies is taken from the New Zealand Coastal Table 4.1 Management techniques used in the Sri Lankan Coastal Management Strategy (White and Samarakoon, 1994; Coast Conservation Department, 1996) *More than one management technique is normally used to implement a given policy; only primary techniques are listed. Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group Policy Statement (Box 4.1) which lists the policies developed for the management of coastal hazards (Box 4.2). The vast majority of expressed policies allow a degree of discretion in decision making. Allowing the professional staff of organizations to make decisions within the broad confines of expressed policies is one of the underlying principles of many organizations. Within governments discretion has been described as an ‘inevitable, inescapable characteristic’ (Bryner, 1987, p. 3). One way of visualizing the role of policy and discretion in decision making is shown in Figure 4.1, which highlights the role of policies containing the range of possible decision-making choices. Figure 4.1 shows a policy acting to reduce the range of possible decisions. In this visualization the degree of discretion narrows as the width of the gap constrained by policy reduces. In many cases the link between expressed and implied policy is blurred with the discretionary powers of an organization’s staff intertwined with that organization’s culture or unwritten rules. The result can be a substantial grey area between expressed and implied policies. The grey area often occurs in cases where decision-making authorities are required to make individual decisions in the absence of expressed policy. Such situations can occur where formal expressions of policy have not yet occurred in newly established authorities, where decision-making powers have extended beyond the boundaries of existing policies, or where day-to-day decisions have been made with the assumption that expressed policies existed because ‘that is how things have always been done’. For example, a permitting authority is developing ‘policy on the run’, because once a decision is made to allow a particular activity at a particular location policy has been set to allow others to undertake the same activity. However, this is not an expressed policy, unless there is a process to document that decision formally as a precedent that will be applied uniformly to all subsequent permit decisions. There are significant advantages and disadvantages of implied policies (Table 4.2). Their major disadvantages include being hidden from public scrutiny, and hence the communication of them to stakeholders involved in decision-making processes possibly being poor. Implied policies can also lead to ad-hoc and sometimes inconsistent decisions. This can be exacerbated if informal policy formulation is undertaken by a few individuals without consideration of their flow-on effects. In conclusion, policy-making is one of the central components of many coastal programmes around the world. The expression of formal policies can act as a guide to decision makers by helping them to choose between actions. In addition, many coastal initiatives contain unwritten (implied) policies which can be a critical part of how programmes operate in practice. The interaction between these different types of policy with legislation for coastal management is described in the next section. Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group (b) Legislation Legislation is the government of the time’s response to community demands for government action or management of particular issues, areas or activities. Legislation or law is defined through a parliamentary or legislative process and the outcome is often expressed as an Act or Law and associated regulations. Before the assenting/passing of an Act or Law considerable debate in parliament and the community usually takes place. The government and community view legislation as a long-term approach to management of issues, areas or activities irrespective of the ruling political party. Because the formulation, passing and amending of legislation consumes considerable staff and financial resources, changing the law is often avoided. Legislation has a number of functions in coastal planning and management, especially in translating concepts, as discussed in Chapter 3, to plans and management actions. Most importantly it sets out the broad purpose for managing the coast and the guiding principles for planning and management. It enables governments to incorporate sustainable development principles, including the precautionary principle and intergenerational equity, into a formal management framework, thereby establishing a basis for sustainable use of the coast while meeting international and national obligations. Also, in some countries legislation is used to define the coast spatially (Chapter 1). Legislation can define or clarify institutional arrangements; or, if a new agency is required, it can specify how that agency will be formed, resourced and operated. If a new agency is not formed, legislation can specify the linkages and interactions of the various institutions. Kenchington (1990) suggests using existing institutions where possible and to use inter-agency agreements to effect management. Legislation also specifies the basis, scope and nature of planning and management. It can detail the steps undertaken to declare a planning area and to formulate the plan, including the requirements for public involvement. It can include the type of plans that can be produced, such as zoning plans, and make provisions so that plans also have the force of law. Table 4.2 Advantages and disadvantages of implied policy-making in coastal management Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group An Act or Law can make provisions for the basis for management; it can also facilitate the use of specific mechanisms for management such as permits, licences, enforcement, education, monitoring and evaluation; and it can specify how the Act or Law will be enforced and who will enforce it. Similarly, legislation can facilitate the formulation of regulations so that provisions in the Act or Law can be implemented and that day-to-day management activities in the coast can be undertaken as highlighted in Chapter 5. Finally, legislation can specify the resourcing of planning and management activities. 4.1.2 Guidelines The term ‘guidelines’ is used here to describe a group of documents which are less prescriptive and/or forceful than formal legislation, policies or regulations, but nevertheless guide the actions of decision makers. Clearly, there are many ways to ‘guide’ decisions, such as using advertising campaigns. This section does not focus on these, but rather examines the informal, yet structured, approaches used by governments for the production of guidance documents. A useful way to consider the range of ways decisions may be guided was developed by Kay et al. (1996a) for examining the variety of approaches available to guide the examination by governments of potential future coastal vulnerability to climate change and sea-level rise (Figure 4.2). The concept in Figure 4.2 is a spectrum of guidance which varies according to levels of prescriptiveness, direct applicability, flexibility and extent of required local knowledge. The practical outcome from the Figure 4.2 Schematic coastal vulnerability assessement guidance spectrum (from Kay et al., 1996a). Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group consideration of such a spectrum is that the form of guidance could range from guidelines, through broadly structured frameworks and manuals, to methodologies. At one end of this guidance spectrum are very broad, flexible and non- prescriptive guidelines. For example, sea-level rise vulnerability assessment guidelines could describe the range of possible assessment techniques and approaches for different biophysical, governmental, social, economic and cultural settings. Such guidelines would have to be interpreted according to need. Although the degree of flexibility is high, the level of direct applicability is low (Figure 4.2). At the other end of the guidance spectrum are highly prescriptive methodologies which aim to be directly applicable, but by their very nature are inflexible and require little local knowledge for their implementation. Midway in the vulnerability assessment guidance spectrum are documents which allow some degree of flexibility while maintaining some direct applicability. Such documents include ‘frameworks’ and manuals. Manuals are becoming increasingly important in Australian coastal management efforts (New South Wales Government Department of Public Works, 1990; Oma et al., 1992). They are designed to describe clearly the range of approaches available to coastal managers, and to discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Manuals can also be designed to include case study materials, as well as technical appendices as required. The choice of guidance document types will be determined in part by the advantages and disadvantages shown in Figure 4.2, and in part by the way they are intended to fit within the broader coastal management system. In some cases the use of a manual will simply be explaining a range of techniques which may be available to implement a particular policy, legislative requirement or coastal management plan; in which case the manual is being used as an implementation tool that may supplement, or replace, the need for more detailed site-level planning. In other circumstances an education programme may require additional material which explains things such as the approach of governments in their coastal management efforts. 4.1.3 Zoning Zoning is one of the simplest and most commonly tools in coastal planning and management. It is also one of the most powerful. Zoning, which is based of the concept of spatially separating and controlling incompatible uses, is a tool which can be applied in a range of situations and which can be modified to suit varying social, economic and political environments. Zoning grew from the ‘nuisance’ crisis in urban management in newly industrialized cities in Europe and North America, especially in relation to health, sanitation and transportation problems. These problems were Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group [...]... representatives (Figure 4. 4) This form of management represents the bottom of the ladder Examples of community-based management from the Philippines (Buhat, 19 94; Christie and White, 19 94) and the Caribbean (Smith and Homer, 19 94) demonstrate the effectiveness of this form of management in meeting management objectives In the Philippines many islands and their surrounding reefs are planned and managed by the... management, and their role in planning and managing of coastal areas (a) Background to the development of collaborative and community-based management Collaborative and community-based management in marine and coastal areas evolved from a convergence of several advances in protected area management, rural development and fisheries development during the 1980s The 1980 World Conservation Strategy and 1982... in management A sense of stewardship and responsibility for managing resources is often an outcome of collaborative and community-based management (Drijver and Sajise, 1993) Various governments are aware of the benefits of collaborative and community-based management; the challenge for managers is to facilitate these forms of management The next section describes collaborative and community-based management, ... practice and management through the development of community management programmes A way to work out the relative use of western and traditional management approaches is through consideration of them in coastal management planning Through the use of the participative management planning process (described in Chapter 5) the customary importance of an area to its stakeholders can be discussed, and the... the island and assisted the community to develop a management committee for full-time surveillance and protection of the sanctuary and reserve surrounding the island This community-based enforcement combined with an extensive education programme and other initiatives have resulted in a significant increase in fish catch to island residents over the last 12 years Today, the Apo Island coral reef and community... declining dugong populations (Anon., 1997) Community-based management is effective in involving urban and urban-fringe residents in on-the-ground management activities Coastcare is a federally funded coastal management initiative in Australia Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group which includes a major component focused on involving communities in on-the-ground management Under this initiative, community groups... using, their value, and how they can be managed through a community-based management programme Education programmes also explain how management of the area or resources will benefit the community, and how they can be a part of the planning and management of resources Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group Box 4. 7 Community-based fisheries management in the Philippines Many Philippine islands were suffering... Western Samoa to day-to-day coastal management In Western Samoa, and many other Pacific nations, villages ‘hold tenure’ over coastal lands and waters, including lagoons and nearshore reefs The traditional basis of this is that villages communally gain access to all the potential resources on an island, from hilltops to the ocean (Crocombe, 1995) Indeed, traditional customs include the use of management tools... agricultural and forestry projects, which have advanced community involvement in the management of land-based protected areas Community involvement in managing marine and coastal areas has, however, lagged behind land areas due to the issue of managing shared resources in multiple-use areas Copyright 1999 Taylor & Francis Group The role of the community in coastal management is wide ranging and depends... roles of the community and lobby (or special interest) groups (Smith et al., 1997) Collaborative and community-based management are two approaches available to managers to increase the level of community and interest group representation in decision making, and are described below (b) Making the choice: collaborative or community-based management? Collaborative and community-based management are the two . Chapter 4 Major coastal management and planning techniques A wide range of techniques is commonly used in coastal management and planning. They can be used individually. Group Box 4. 1 National-level coastal policy and planning in Australia and New Zealand An interesting contrast between the use of ‘policy’ and ‘plan’ in developing national actions on coastal management. New Zealand Coastal Table 4. 1 Management techniques used in the Sri Lankan Coastal Management Strategy (White and Samarakoon, 19 94; Coast Conservation Department, 1996) *More than one management