This workshop is concerned with exploring current problems of Integrated Coast Zone Management in the Asia-Pacific region. Most of the presentations will discuss specific issues in particular Pacific nations and the purpose of this contribution is to help "set the scene" by reflecting on the general nature of problems in coastal management.

Exploitation of resources in the coastal zone has been going on for many tens of thousands of years. During this time, ways of controlling such exploitation were evolved that allowed coastal resources to be used more-or-less sustainably.

Changes over time in Pacific maritime cultures have necessarily been accompanied by changes in the ways in which they manage coastal resources. Economic and social changes over the last sixty years or so have led to increases in population, especially in the coastal zone. At the same time, the need for economic development to cater for the larger population (and the need to survive in an increasingly globalized economy) have resulted in an much greater range and intensity of coastal resource-uses than was the case half a century ago. Many of these new, or newly-intensified uses can conflict with other, ecosystem-based, resource uses, often by damaging important ecosystem processes.

Despite the wide range of economic development among nations in the Asia-Pacific region, some common threads can be distinguished and the same trends seem to occur no matter what the economic status of a maritime nation. As an example, economic development usually entails the development of new industries and associated infrastructure. Reclamation of inshore areas as sites for industry and infrastructure, coupled with increased discharge of industrial and urban wastes, places pressure on coastal environments and the ecosystem services that they provide. At the same time there is an increased reliance on those services so that, for instance, fishery yields may be reduced because a need for more fish may lead to overfishing, which may be accompanied by the direct loss of habitat or by the effects of pollution. At the same time, increased agricultural development in coastal catchments often leads to increased runoff of sediments, fertilizers and pesticides to coastal waters, adding to the stresses on coastal ecosystems. As an added stress, the immense increase in tourism over the last few decades not only accentuates the pressures on infrastructure (especially transport and accommodation), but also requires that coastal systems are maintained in an appropriate aesthetic state, because enjoyment of the environment is an important attractor for many tourists.

The increased pressures on coastal resources thus result not only from an accentuation of previous, "traditional" uses but from the development and evolution of a range of uses that may previously have been minor or non-existent. A good example here is international tourism. It is clear that the diversity and intensity of coastal uses are likely to continue.

The task facing all maritime nations is therefore to control the exploitation of coastal resources so as to make such exploitation as sustainable as possible, not only within the envelope of current circumstances but also to take account, as far as possible, of increasing population and other pressures. The nature and range of coastal resource uses, and the options for controlling those uses, will necessarily vary from nation to nation, depending on economic, political and social factors.

　

Coastal resource-uses range from the exploitation of physical features, right through to the use of ecosystem outputs and "ecological services" such as the maintenance of fish habitats. When the objective is to utilize physical aspects of the environment, it is often possible to "manage" those aspects directly. Thus the development of ports and harbours may be accomplished by building physical infrastructure, maintaining navigational channels by dredging and so forth.

Ecological outputs - "ecosystem services" - are difficult or impossible to manipulate directly. Here the emphasis is on controlling human influences on ecological processes, rather than maintaining ecosystems and habitats directly. The distinction can be fuzzy, since agriculture is essentially a matter of direct manipulation of simplified habitats.

The exploitation and management of ecological systems may often be relatively simple in principle, as in the reforestation of coastal strips with mangroves and other vegetation, for the sake of coastal protection as well as for the yield of timber for fuel and building. Here the approach tends to be agricultural in nature, with preparation of the ground and deliberate planting of trees, but the development and maintenance of the planted area is usually left for natural ecological processes to support. In other cases, control of exploitation is less straightforward. The maintenance of coastal fisheries, for instance, requires not only protection of the fish stock themselves, but also the maintenance of those ecological processes that maintain and replenish those stocks. In this respect, protection of fishery habitats, especially of breeding and nursery areas, is increasingly seen as being important.

These considerations also apply to the maintenance of biodiversity, now widely regarded as being of global importance. Within nations, biodiversity and the maintenance of habitats may be important in supporting tourism industries, especially in ecologically-based tourism where the opportunity to explore unfamiliar habitats may be an inipoitant attractor for tourists.

The wide range of activity types in the coastal zone, and the fact that so many of them rely on the effective functioning of ecological systems for them to be sustainable, suggest that much coastal zone management is ultimately focussed on the control of human activities to ensure that the important ecological maintenance functions and processes are maintained. Such control is inevitably a function of governments, either directly or by defining policies, guidelines and regulations for the ways in which coastal resources are exploited.

　

Resource management involves virtually all aspects of a culture - political, legal, economic, industrial and social. Scientific knowledge of, and data on, the operation of local resource-maintenance processes, is also an important national input to resource management. Effective control of resource uses obviously requires effective political, legal and administrative structures that allow resource-use decisions to be made and carried out. These arrangements naturall vary from nation to nation, but all involve some degree of central control, with greater or lesser collaboration between levels of government, and between government and the polulation-at-large. In all nations it is possible to identify problems and imperfections that inder effective control of resource uses. Equally, of course, there are areas where decision-making systems work well and sustainably.

The information required for effective decisions on what activities to control, and how to control them, is very diverse - reflecting the diversity of cultural aspects involved. Scientific and technical information-requirements include an understanding of the ecological processes that maintain resources, the ways in which specific resources and ecosystems respond to exploitaton and, importantly, which activities may not be sustainable. Information on the nature and extent of current uses, their importance to a nation as a whole, or to groups within a nation, and the social and economic implications of changes in resource uses are required at a planning level. The nature of government policies, the legislative tools available and the methods of enforcement of government decisions are also important at a political and administraive level. Acquiring the necessary information and applying it effectively within decision-making processes has proved troublesome in all maritime nations.

　

Scientific understanding of ecological processes is still rather patchy. Whilst much is known of the details of a range of processes of nutrient cycling and trophic and competitive networks, it is rarely possible to comprehend the ecosystem-wide context of resource maintence in a particular location, with a consequently poor ability to predict the outcomes of natural or humanly-caused disturbances. We thus need to know more about maintenance processes for given resource types, including the use of subsystems or individual species/habitats (e.g. fisheries, mangals etc.) At the same time, increasing pressures on resources mean that we need to "fine tune" resource uses so as to extract the maximum benefit to a culture yet still maintain the resources. This factor emphasizes the need for scientific understanding at a variety of ecological levels, and of the ways in which particular human activities may affect natural processes.

The structure of governmental administrative arrangements in most nations probably reflects the experiences of past needs and perceptions of present and near-future needs. Situations develop, though, so prediction of future social needs and the required departmental and administrative structures and processes may often be either too fuzzy or ill-defined to allow effective decision making. Administrative flexibility is therefore required but must be accomplished in the face of organizational and political inertia resulting from the natural tendency to keep to familiar and understood arrangements.

The immense range of social concerns involved in coastal zone management means that a variety of government departments will necessarily be involved in many aspects of management. This will lead to problems of overlapping jurisdictions that can lead to fragmented responsibility for a given issue. There may also be conflicts between legal instruments, especially if priorities in legislative determinations and requirements have not been clearly defined. Such conflicts can be a particular problem where new legislation is drafted without necessary referral to, and dovetailing with , Pre-existing legislation.

Problems of communications between departments are inevitable. Much day-to-day co-operation may be handled adequately by good working relationships between departments engaged in a common task, but the necessary administrative control requires that there are appropriate protocols for communication and co-operation between departments. In this respect there would seem to be a limit to the flexibility that an administrative system can employ without the system breaking down.

However, changes in population pressures, economic opportunities and aspirations inevitably result in increasing pressures on resources and also in changed patterns of resource use. Some flexibility in control mechanisms is needed to cope with such changes, and it is not always obvious how to devise an efficient and stable administrative system that is also flexible on the scales currently required in resource management. At the same time, resource exploitation has to satisfy the needs and social requirements of a population. People need food, shelter, clean water and range of social support-systems (which differ widely in nature and formality between cultures). It is a large task to maintain satisfaction of social needs in the face of increasing population pressures, let alone satisfy the increasing aspirations of a population.

Juggling the conflicting requirements of the wide variety of resource uses in the coastal zone, while at the same time preventing the degradation of vital resource-maintenance processes, is no easy task. It is perhaps easiest when there is a clear national policy for the desired state of resources and the resolution of resource-use conflicts. But it also requires effective and appropriate legislation, so that government agencies have the power to control human resource-using activities in an appropriate way. Furthermore, the agencies themselves must be effectively structured and funded if they are to be able to carry out their reqired function and to enforce the provisions of the legislation.

Achieving these aims requires time. Though it is is now widely agreed that there is a need to integrate politics, legislation, governmental structures and social processes, it is not so easy to see how provide such integration glven the particular details of any nation's political and legislative machinery and the ways in which resource users are able to relate to those mechamisms. Part of the problem is that the perceptions as to what is politically and administratively desirable seem to change on a generational time-scale, while the need to resolve management issues becomes more urgent with each decade or less. It may well be that we can achieve an effective management system only gradually, by evolution rather than direct design. If so, each step in that evolution must be developed from the step that came before it, and must be an appropriate base for the steps that follow.

Such considerations may help explain why the fragmentation of legislative and administrative arreangements is so commonly seen as a problem. It may be that in coastal management as in many other areas, effective arrangements cannot be designed but must be allowed to evolve. The problem here then seems to be to help them to evolve quickly enough to keep up with the rapidly-changing pressures on the coastal zone.

These factors make it important for coastal managers to have the required technical skills and understanding. Formal training in aspects of coastal management is an important element, but can only go so far. It is also important for managers to acquire a feel for the context of a problem, to be able to relate the scientific, economic, political administrative and social elements into a single view of the nature of a problem and of its potential solution. contextual view can be learnt, but it is impossible to teach in a formal way. Here, again, we see the importance of the rapidity with which coastal management issues develop.

　

The problems of coastal zone management discussed above are common to virtually all maritime nations although, as noted, their particular expression and importance will vary from nation to nation. A series of reviews of national systems of coastal zone management (Hotta and Dutton 1995). showed that coastal managers in the Asia-Pacific region share a range of concerns. The degradation of coastal ecosystems in general, or of specific habitats, was identified as a problem by a large majority of the nations contributing to the review. Pollution and problems with fisheries were frequently cited.

Administrative, planning and institutional concerns were also seen as being important. Ineffective planning, regulation and enforcement and inadequate governmental policies were all noted as problems in some nations, and institutional fragmentation was also seen as a hindrance to effective management.

　

Given the rapidity with which pressures on the coast are increasing, and the manifest problems with information supply, policy development, legislative powers and administrative arrangements, one may question whether it is possible to achieve a satisfactory and sustainable relationship with the coastal zone in the short and medium term. It is difficult enough to keep up with the developing situation, let alone being able to improve it. However, coastal management in its current form is a very recent activity. Whilst the pressures on the coastal zone are unlikely to decrease, there is every prospect that our ability to manage them will become more effective as we gain more experience. In a real sense, we are all learning as we go along, so developing an effective approach to integrated coastal zone management cannot be done in isolation, but requires a wide and continuous comparison of experience, mistakes and triumphs. This workshop will make an important contribution to that process.