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A 674 VOLUME 110 | NUMBER 11 | November 2002 • Environmental Health Perspectives

Focus

In one of the greatest human migrations ofmodern times, people are flocking to coast-lines around the world. People in developing

countries have relocated from the countrysideto towns and cities of every size during the past50 years. But the most dramatic populationgrowth has occurred in giant coastal cities, par-ticularly those in Asia and Africa. Manyexperts argue that cities will have to cope withalmost all of the population growth to come inthe next two decades, and much of thisincrease will occur in coastal urban centers.

Cities concentrate people and businesses—and their wastes. Yet most large cities aroundthe world lack adequate provisions for treatingtheir domestic and industrial wastes, whichpour into coastal waters. At the same time,

booming cities are sprawling across coastalenvironments, destroying important resources.These problems and the scale of populationgrowth are most alarming in the tropics. Somecoastal cities in the tropics are doubling theirpopulation in just a decade, so the pace ofecosystem change is much greater there.

Cities Take Center StageIn 1950, New York City was the planet’s only“megacity,” defined as a city with more than 10million people. Now there are 17 megacitiesaround the globe, and 14 are located in coastalareas. Eleven of today’s megacities are locatedin Asia, and the fastest-growing ones are locat-ed in the tropics. The United Nations (UN)Population Division anticipates four new

megacities by 2015, including Tianjin,Istanbul, Cairo, and Lagos. All but Cairo arelocated on coastlines.

But megacities are just one part of thepopulation boom in coastal areas. Two-fifthsof the world’s major cities of 1–10 millionpeople are also located near coastlines. In2001, almost 3 billion people worldwide livedin an urban center—generally defined as atown or city of more than 1,000–2,000 peo-ple—and by 2030 that number will likelyincrease to 5 billion. This population growthwill be especially heavy in coastal urban areasof less-developed countries. By contrast, thepercentage of people living in cities in NorthAmerica, South America, Europe, and Japan isexpected to remain stable at 75–85%. N

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Focus • Coastal Cities

Coastal populations on every continenthave exploded as global trade has flowed intocoastal nations through international ports,creating jobs and economic growth. The worldeconomy grew more than fivefold between1950 and 1990. The internationalization offinance, production, and services, plusadvances in information technology and cheaplabor, reduced physical boundaries around theworld. Cities such as São Paulo, Buenos Aires,and Jakarta prospered after deregulation offinancial markets, and their urban cores flour-ished with Western-style, high-income com-mercial and residential gentrification.

Rapid development and populationgrowth are causing similar problems alongshorelines around the world, according to a

report in the January–March 2000 issue ofCoastal Management by Stephen Olsen, direc-tor of the Coastal Resources Center at theUniversity of Rhode Island, and PatrickChristie, a research assistant professor at theUniversity of Washington’s School of MarineAffairs. Important habitats such as wetlands,coral reefs, sea grasses, and estuaries are beingdegraded or destroyed. Changes in the volumeand quality of freshwater inflows to estuarieshave affected water quality. As a result, estuary-dependent fish and shellfish populations andtheir associated fisheries are declining.

Moreover, fishermen are losing access totheir fishing grounds. Resorts, hotels, andcondominiums are usually built in attractivebays, inlets, and creeks that fishermen have

traditionally used as docking facilities andfishing grounds. In many coastal areas,tourism drives up the cost of shorefront land,making it difficult for fishermen to live andwork there. At some point, fishermen lack aplace to sustain the infrastructure they need toply their trade.

Coastal Growth in the United StatesMany Americans are moving from high-densi-ty, cold-weather urban centers in theNortheast and Midwest to warm-weather,lower-density, suburban resort communitiesthroughout the Sun Belt, including shorelinesfrom Virginia to Texas, and also to the PacificCoast, particularly Southern California. Ofthe 20 fastest-growing U.S. counties, 17 are

Cities by the sea. The lights of the Earth’scities, as seen from space by a NASA

satellite, tell of a population that prefersto live on the coast.

coastal. Coastal counties cover less than 20%of the land area of the United States, but todaythey account for more than half of the nation’spopulation.

According to the December 2001 reportState of the Coast, published by the NationalOceanic and Atmospheric Administration(NOAA), the coastal population will grow to165 million by 2015, a 50% increase over1960. But the coastal portion of the U.S. pop-ulation has remained stable since 1960 and willcontinue that way. The coastal portion hasaveraged about 54% of the national popula-tion total since 1960, and it’s expected toremain the same to 2015.

Along U.S. shores, financial and entertain-ment centers such as New York and Los Angeleshave continued as dominantforces in the world economy. Atthe same time, these metropoli-tan areas have seen strikingchanges in land use patternssince the 1950s. High-densitydevelopment has boomed nearharbors and on barrier islands,where land values are extremelyhigh. But low-density develop-ment has also gobbled up landin every coastal watershed,because Americans want to livein lower-density settings. “Yousee this massive outward flowaround the United States,” saysKenneth M. Johnson, a demographer andsociologist at Loyola University Chicago. As aresult, many metropolitan areas have grownoutward physically far more rapidly than theirpopulations have risen.

Greater Los Angeles, for instance,increased its population by 45% between1970 and 1990, while its urbanized areaswelled by nearly 300%. Along the EastCoast, dozens of cities, suburbs, and townshave blended together into a super-sizedmegalopolis along the northeastern corridor.This urbanized area stretches for 500 milesfrom Boston to Washington, D.C., and con-tains 50 million people. It continues toexpand southeast toward Norfolk, Virginia.

Many rural “recreational” counties experi-enced high growth rates from 1990 to 1998,according to The Rural Rebound, a 1999 studyconducted by Johnson for the PopulationReference Bureau. Newcomers and touristspoured into places like Beaufort County,South Carolina, home of Hilton Head Island,which had a population increase of just over40% in the 1990s.

The reasons for these increases are many:the appeal of living near the water and visitingthe shoreline, increased tourism, more peoplewith enough household wealth to relocate forretirement, increased second-home purchases,and the chance for people to relocate to

attractive coastal areas where they cantelecommute or start new businesses or secondcareers. “Many communities are changing fromplaces that once had small populations in theoff season, booming only during the summer,to places that have year-round populations,”says Michael Ratcliffe, a geographer with theU.S. Census Bureau.

This also means more jobs for workers inservices that support all these new coastal resi-dents and visitors. As the need for supportservices grows, workers move into the area andlocate in inland towns farther back from thecoast, where property values are lower. Newhousing, schools, malls, and hospitals arespringing up in these sprawling new inlandcommunities to serve the workers.

Worldwide SprawlVirtually all metropolitan areas in NorthAmerica, Western Europe, and Japan are expe-riencing long-distance “deconcentration”—orurban development that spreads across thelandscape—due to the influence of commut-ing by automobile and to the dispersing effectsof information technologies, said Peter Hall, aprofessor of planning at the University CollegeLondon’s Bartlett School of Architecture andPlanning, in 1997 at the first of an annualseries of lectures sponsored by the MegacitiesFoundation, established in 1994 to study the

impacts of growing cities. The capabilities oftelecommunication have improved, and theircosts have increasingly fallen. Businesses nolonger rely on meeting clients and customersface-to-face in a downtown business andindustrial center; they can often use forms oftelecommunication to conduct business.Additionally, until the 1970s, many businesseshad to be situated in an urban core, where theycould expeditiously ship out products andimport supplies and raw materials via a port,river, or railway terminal. But in recent years,transportation systems have become muchmore based on cars and trucks moving alongfreeways. When state and national govern-ments built extensive beltways and freewaysaround metropolitan areas, the logistics forbusinesses located on the urban/rural fringeswere greatly improved.

But sprawl doesn’t always happen the sameways in every region. In Pacific Asia—fromIndonesia to Japan—regions just outsidemegacities have grown the fastest in popula-tion and land use changes, says Yue-manYeung, director of the Hong Kong Institute ofAsia-Pacific Studies at the Chinese Universityof Hong Kong. In Jakarta and Manila, landuse controls are less stringent in the urbanfringe areas, where developers can simply paveover farmland or forestland and easily installinfrastructure, rather than purchasing more



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Population Density (1994)persons/km2

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Source: Natural Resources Conservation Service. World Soil Resources MapIndex. Global Population Density—1994. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department ofAgriculture. Available: http://www.nrcs.usda.gov/technical/worldsoils/mapindx/popden.html[accessed 9 October 2002].

expensive land in built-up areas, and then tear-ing out old, decaying infrastructure to installnew water and sewer lines and roads. As aresult, these giant urban centers spread outand blend into adjacent smaller towns andcities. “The main city interacts and grows withmany smaller cities in the surrounding area,with boundaries between them growingincreasingly blurred and forming a new enti-ty,” says Yeung.

In China’s Pearl River Delta, the cities ofHong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou arebecoming a single continuous urban areacontaining more than 20 million people.Development has been spurred in part byChina’s first superhighway, the Shenzhen–Guangzhou tollway, which runs for 72 milesthrough this corridor, one of the fastest-growing regions in the world.

The outward growth of Chinese cities alsois different from that of the West. Most majorChinese cities, such as Shanghai, have moved

factories out to industrial zones on theurban edges, according to a 6 September2002 report in The New York Times.Inner-city workers have been moved tosatellite suburbs, where they live in con-crete high-rises. This relocation has freedup land for gentrification at the urbancore. Now many urban Chinese, whoonce bicycled to nearby factories, have to

commute by buses or private cars. China hasbuilt billions of dollars of expressways toaccommodate the increasing traffic.

Threats to Coastal EcosystemsIn February 2002, the Stakeholder Forum forOur Common Future, formerly the UNEnvironment Development Forum, dissemi-nated Environment Briefing 3, which describedregional and coastal trends around the world.In many cases, the briefing noted, the loss ofcoral reefs is an important leading indicator ofenvironmental crisis. For example, 22% ofCaribbean coral reefs are effectively destroyed.Another 33% are considered at high risk dueto increased runoff and sedimentation fromdeforestation, and nutrient contributions ofsewage from hotels, coastal construction, andmining. In Southeast Asia, 32% of coral reefshave been severely degraded by human activi-ties and global climate change. In central andsouthern Africa, reefs have been degraded

from pollution, sedimen-tation, overexploitation,and climate change.

These changes couldprove disastrous, becausethe sea life found in coralreefs is so important as afood source. ThroughoutSoutheast Asia, for exam-ple, coral reef fisheriesprovide 10–25% of theprotein available to peopleliving along coastlines,according to the 2002World Resources Institutereport Reefs at Risk inSoutheast Asia.

Many coastal citiesare growing rapidly acrossriver deltas, draining wet-lands, building on flood-

plains, cutting coastal forests, and increasingsediment loads into estuaries. Sprawling urban-ization across watersheds—which can includeareas hundreds of miles inland—harmsstreams, creeks, and rivers that flow into coastalwaters. Rainfall washes pesticides, fertilizers,oil, and other nonpoint-source pollutants offlawns, roads, and parking lots into waterwaysthat flow to the ocean. Rivers have beenstraightened to accommodate giant oceangoingships for port traffic, so that the water flow intowetlands and mangrove forests is disrupted.

Coastal wetlands—salt marshes and tidalflats in temperate areas, and mangrove forests intropical regions—provide food, habitat, andnurseries for 80–90% of the world’s marine fishand shellfish. Many fish and shellfish speciesspawn in the near-shore ocean. Their youngmigrate into estuaries and wetlands, where thelarvae feed on detritus. Later, as adults, theymigrate back to the coastal ocean. By disruptingthese wetland habitats, poorly planned coastaldevelopments have often reduced commerciallyimportant fish populations that rely on theseareas. Moreover, aquaculture expansion hasdestroyed 3 million hectares of mangrove forests,including 65% of Mexico’s mangroves.

A variety of studies during the past decadehave shown that when more than 10% of theacreage of a watershed is covered in roads andother hard surfaces, the rivers and streams with-in the watershed become seriously degraded,according to the 2002 Pew Oceans Commissionreport Coastal Sprawl: The Effects of UrbanDesign on Aquatic Ecosystems in the United States.The report states that “by virtually every meas-ure of ecosystem health, the streams, creeks,marshes, and rivers surrounded by hardenedwatersheds are less diverse, less stable, and lessproductive than those in natural watersheds.”

Many estuaries worldwide are also damagedto some degree by untreated or inadequatelytreated domestic and industrial waste.


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Untreated wastewater contributes pathogens,toxic contaminants, suspended solids, organicwastes, and dissolved nutrients such as nitrogenand phosphorus. Organic wastes can signifi-cantly reduce the biological oxygen available inwaterways, causing fish kills.

Most coastal cities in Asia discharge allof their domestic and industrial wastesdirectly into the sea without any treatment,writes Yihang Jiang, a program officer withthe UN Environment Programme, in a 2001special megacities issue of Ocean & CoastalManagement. In Shanghai, only 58% ofurban households are connected to publicsewage systems; in Mumbai, only 51% areconnected. Jakarta’s centralized wastewatersystem reaches only about 3% of its popula-tion, according to Tusy A. Adibroto, directorof that city’s Centre for the Assessment andApplication of Environmental Technology.About 97% of the population still haveindividual treatment such as septic tanks,and in many cases the individual treatmentdoes not follow local regulations. Of 30,000factories in Jakarta, about 10% have waste-water treatment.

Many developing nations fail to treatdomestic or industrial wastewater becausethey lack the necessary funds, technology,and human resources, says Yeung. “Theexperience and expertise are available in theinternational community, but access tothese is expensive and out of reach of manylarge cities in the developing world. You also

need people who are at a certain stage ofdevelopment to be able to manage, operate,and maintain these facilities.”

Even many developed nations do nottreat their domestic sewage. In 1996, 48% ofcoastal cities on the Mediterranean Sealacked centralized sewage treatment, accord-ing a 2000 European Environment Agencyreport, State and Pressure of the Marine andCoastal Mediterranean Environment.

Most municipal wastewater treatmentplants in the United States handle bothdomestic sewage and industrial wastes.During primary treatment, large solids insewage are screened or settled. Secondarytreatment uses aeration and bacterial actionto reduce pathogens, most contaminantsolids, and about 85% of organic materialand suspended solids. Then wastewater isdisinfected with chlorine, ozone, or ultravi-olet radiation. With advanced or tertiarytreatment, wastewater is further processedby flocculation, coagulation, clarification,or filtration. The Clean Water Act requiresthat wastewater treatment facilities achievethe standards of secondary treatment. Theproblem is that secondary treatment canremove only about one-third of wastewaternitrogen.

In coastal waters, nitrogen is the principalcause of eutrophication. During the processof eutrophication, excess nitrogen spursgrowth of aquatic plants that eventually die,sink, and decay, depleting the water’s oxygen

supply and suffocating many kinds of sea life.“Nutrients are a bigger problem than toxiccompounds in most of the developed world,at least for water quality issues,” says RobertHowarth, an ecologist at Cornell Universityon leave at the Woods Hole Marine BiologicalLaboratory. “Nutrients are not nearly as wellregulated and controlled.” Nutrient pollutionhas damaged sea grass beds, coral reefs, andcoastal ponds, and degraded water quality inpoorly flushed bays and estuaries.

In September 2001, the U.S. Environ-mental Protection Agency (EPA) released itsNational Coastal Condition Report, in which itpoints out that eutrophication in estuarinewaters is increasing throughout much of theUnited States. Every U.S. coastal area is in“poor” eutrophic condition, except for theSoutheast, which is in “fair” condition, andAlaska and Hawaii, which were not evaluated.

The single largest source of nitrogen inU.S. coastal waters is agricultural activity,says Howarth. Emissions from cars, trucks,and coal-fired energy plants are the secondmajor source. When fossil fuels are burned,nitrogen compounds are released into theatmosphere and fall back into waterwaysvia acid rain, adding significant amounts ofnitrogen to some coastal waters. Mostnitrogen from cars, trucks, and other vehi-cles is localized, traveling a short distanceinto local waters. By contrast, nitrogenfrom tall power plant smokestacks can trav-el many hundreds of miles. Sewage is also

an important nitrogensource, and in some estu-aries, such as Long IslandSound and the Hudsonestuary off Manhattan, it isthe largest contributor,says Howarth.

But declining coastalresources can rarely beblamed on a single humanimpact. In the case of coralreefs, for example, Reefs atRisk warns that overfishing,destructive fishing practices,and intensive developmentin coastal areas all posethreats. Some fishermen useblast fishing to capture livefish for restaurants and theaquarium trade. Currentfishing levels and methodsare unsustainable. Massivedeforestation and the con-struction of roads, airports,channels, ports, and build-ings have also damagedreefs by adding sedimentand nutrient loads towaterways. Increased sedi-ments can smother corals;



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excess nutrients can encourage an overgrowthof algae on coral reefs.

Coastal Management in the UnitedStatesManaging development in coastal zones isso difficult partly because these regions crossso many physical, social, and regulatoryboundaries. Urbanized coastal watershedsare affected by numerous competing economicsectors, which can includetourism, fisheries, agricul-ture, aquaculture, forestry,manufacturing, oil and gasextraction, waste disposal,marine transportation, andreal estate development.

Yet most governmentsmanage each sector separate-ly—assuming they regulatethem at all. One agency reg-ulates fisheries; another regu-lates gas and oil exploration;yet another regulates forestry.U.S. coastal management isshared among numerous fed-eral agencies, includingNOAA, the EPA, the U.S.Army Corps of Engineers,and the Federal EmergencyManagement Agency, plusvarious agencies within theDepartment of the Interior.“Our institutions are organ-ized into sectors, and they generally have adifficult time integrating their efforts,” saysChristie. Meanwhile, local, regional, andnational agencies often fail to collaborate oncoastal management issues.

One advantage of U.S. coastal zone gov-ernance is that state agencies have significantauthority in a state–federal partnership. TheCoastal Zone Management Act (CZMA),passed initially in 1972, provides federalfunds to states, which in turn manage theircoastal areas in accordance with a set of federalguidelines. Although all states participatingin the CZMA must address coastal non-point-source pollution, each state’s coastalzone management is unique, with distinctpriorities that address local conditions. Somefocus on nutrient reduction in coastalwaters; others focus on permitting develop-ment projects. But insiders believe that,although some state programs attempt todevelop a vision for their coast and implementit, others are little more than permitting pro-grams for development. This has led to acommon criticism of the CZMA—that it isinsufficiently performance-based.

“The Coastal Zone Management Act is agood framework, but we don’t really have anycoherent coastal national strategy or plan,” saysTimothy Beatley, an associate professor of

urban and environmental planning at theUniversity of Virginia and coauthor of the bookAn Introduction to Coastal Zone Management.“Federal agencies seem to be operating in isola-tion, and at times at cross purposes.” Beatleysays the United States needs a national coastalstrategy that would involve the collaboration ofall the federal agencies that affect coastal zones:“We should come up with a vision about thecoastal zone describing what the coast should be

like by 2030 or2050, with tar-gets and desiredoutcomes.”

Few state programs have influence overurban and regional plans in coastal watersheds.In many states, local governments have almostexclusive authority over land use planning.The result is that many municipalities andcounties in the nation’s coastal zones can estab-lish comprehensive plans for future develop-ment without consulting any state coastal zoneprograms. According to Christopher Mann,director of ocean and coastal policy for thePew Oceans Commission, a key role for statesis to require baseline growth managementplanning by their municipalities, provide tech-nical and financial assistance to accomplish

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this, and require and assist with coordinationamong municipalities.

State and federal agencies sometimes don’tcooperate, either. An important element of theCZMA is that all federal activity within or out-side of a state’s coastal zone has to be consistentwith the state’s management programs. In otherwords, federal agencies are supposed to coordi-nate their activities with those of state coastalagencies. Yet “most states don’t include fisheriesin their coastal management plans for reasons ofhistory and turf,” says Mann. “If the federalgovernment is doing something wrong in fish-eries management”—from the state’s point ofview—“states can’t use consistency authority tobring the federal management plan in line.”

Now some regulators and nongovern-mental organizations are calling for regionalmanagement of coastal resources that isplace-based or ecosystem-based. “You’d havethe fish experts and water experts and birdhabitat experts all sitting around the table,looking at the whole watershed and discussingwhat is best for an ecosystem,” says DebraHernandez, chairwoman of the Coastal StatesOrganization (which represents the governorsof U.S. coastal states and territories) and direc-tor of policy and program development forSouth Carolina’s Office of Ocean CoastalResource Management. She notes, however,that there are practical limits to this kind ofresource management: coastal ecosystems areaffected by air pollution and local land usedecisions along watersheds often hundreds ofmiles inland. Mann says the Pew Oceans

Commission will issue a report in early 2003calling for area-based ocean governanceplans that would provide a coordinatingmechanism to focus all relevant policies onthe highest priorities within an ecosystem.

With all their faults, U.S. coastal zoneprograms have a distinct advantage over thoseof many other nations: the United Statesinvests about $50 million per year in stateprograms established by the CZMA.Moreover, the EPA’s estuarine managementprograms provide $47 million per year tostates. In most cases, individual states providean additional 50% in matching funds forthese programs. By contrast, developingnations usually do not have such financialresources.

Efforts Elsewhere in the WorldOther nations face challenges similar to those ofthe United States. Many coastal nations haverapid, chaotic development along coastlines.Government often does not manage it or evenkeep track of it; government simply lacks basicinformation about the development that isoccurring along the coast.

During the mid-1980s, China loosened its“top-down” regulation of land use to encourageeconomic growth. But as the national govern-ment stepped back from regulatory enforce-ment, it left a power vacuum, because local andprovincial governments had only limited—orsectoral—authority over coastal and marineresources. Local agencies, in particular, hadoverlapping jurisdictions and poor cooperation.

The result was unchecked development in thecoastal zone, especially with regard to aquacul-ture, which has been largely unregulated.

But since the mid-1990s, the Chinese cen-tral government has taken steps to regain itsauthority over coastal land use. In August 2002,the Chinese National People’s Congress passeda national zonation scheme for the entire coastcalled the Sea Area Use Law. Provincial andlocal governments will be instructed to pass reg-ulations consistent with this national policy.

But it may prove difficult over the shortterm for the central government to regain itsinfluence over China’s rapidly expandingcoastal economy. “There are tremendous turfissues that have to be resolved,” says JonathanJusti, Asia program manager for NOAA’sNational Ocean Service. “There are strong pri-vate-sector interests versus government inter-ests, and there are government sectors that haveconflict among themselves. The private-sectorinterests are much stronger today, and theymove pretty aggressively.”

Nevertheless, China has already made someprogress in addressing turf issues. For example,in the late 1990s, China moved to restructure itsprovincial regulatory system, merging its oceanand fisheries agencies, says Justi. These mergeswere an attempt to integrate important func-tions in China’s marine management structure.

The 1992 UN Conference on Environ-ment and Development, or Earth Summit,helped to build interest in swift changesoccurring along the world’s coastlines. Thisconference also promoted integrated coastal

management (ICM), a setof ideals and principles, as aresponse to these changes.ICM emerged from suc-cessful aspects of the U.S.programs established underthe CZMA. Governmentsthat set up ICM programsencourage participation bya wide variety of stakehold-ers across economic sectors.

To manage dynamiccoastal environments effec-tively, ICM programs mustdraw on the knowledge offishermen and other localusers, exploring the natural,social, and economic condi-tions that prevail there.During the ICM process,fishermen, port officials,representatives from tourismand hotel associations, andmany other stakeholders dis-cuss management optionswith regulators from coastalresource agencies. ICM pro-grams use various manage-ment tools and processes—



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establishment of marine protected areas, fish-eries regulation, and upland forestry manage-ment, among others—to ensure sustainable useof resources for the benefit of local communities.

In ICM’s ideal manifestation, sector-by-sector management of coastal resources wouldstill exist. Fishery managers would continueworking on fishery allocations, but an ICMprogram would take primary responsibility forthe effects of land-based pollution sources onfishery nursery areas. This would happen bytaking action against polluters, but perhapsmore importantly by setting up permittingprograms for development.

Since the Earth Summit, multi-lateral banks have supported ICMefforts around the world. TheInter-American Development Bankinvested $60 million for the period1993–1996 in ICM programs indeveloping countries. The WorldBank earmarked an estimated $500million for ICM efforts for theperiod 1996–2004. A number ofGlobal Environment Facility proj-ects rely on ICM principles to meettheir objectives, according to Olsenand Christie.

China has been experimentingwith ICM in pilot projects that arecofunded by international organi-zations leveraged with domesticfunds, says Justi. One ICMdemonstration site is the Xiamencoastal area, a project supported bythe Global Environment Facility,the UN Development Programme,and the International MaritimeOrganization. Before implementingits new Sea Area Use Law, Chinaintended to test ICM concepts atdemonstration sites such asXiamen to collect informationabout coordinated management ofmarine resources. The goal of theXiamen project was to demon-strate the feasibility of preventingsea pollution without jeopardizingeconomic growth. The Xiamenproject has established plans torelocate shrimp culture pens awayfrom shipping lanes and sensitiveenvironmental areas, to developareas into ecological resort towns, and to protectremaining endangered marine flora and fauna.

The Baseline 2000 survey, conducted bysenior research associate Jens Sorensen of theUniversity of Massachusetts Boston UrbanHarbors Institute, found 380 ICM programsin 92 nations and semisovereign states.Nevertheless, “few really good ICM pro-grams are in place,” says Guy Jobbins, aresearch fellow in coastal management atUniversity College London. Still, ICM is a

management process, and it’s difficult to saywhat is “successful,” because in many placesthe process is still in early stages.

“It’s important to have mutual learningbased on mutual respect, a process that breaksdown barriers to authority,” says Jobbins.“Technocrats don’t know everything, andthink they do.” In some countries, however,regulators refuse to listen to local people.“They say, ‘You’re an ignorant peasant—goaway, stop bothering me.’”

It’s common for ICM projects in develop-ing countries to falter soon after funding from

development banks has ended. “Many of theseICM institutions and processes cease to existrather quickly after external support is with-drawn,” says Christie. “Time and again, whenthe funding is used up, interesting ICMprocesses collapse. There have been successes inICM, but a lot of failures as well.” Reasons forthe failures are complex, with a variety of his-torical, sociological, and economic factorsincluding disparities of wealth, lack of commu-nication among agencies, and bureaucratic turf

battles. Christie and a team of researchers arestudying seven sites in the Philippines and twoin Indonesia to learn more about the barriers tosuccessful ICM projects.

At the World Summit on SustainableDevelopment, held in Johannesburg, SouthAfrica, 26 August–4 September 2002, nationsagreed to make several efforts regarding oceansand fisheries, including some that apply tocoastal cities. For one, nations will encouragethe use of the “ecosystem management”approach for the sustainable development ofthe oceans. This approach recognizes that

modifications in one aspect of anecosystem can affect other areas andpeople’s livelihoods. Nations alsoagreed to develop and facilitate by2012 the use of diverse approachesand tools, including the ecosystemapproach, the elimination ofdestructive fishing practices, andthe establishment of marine pro-tected areas consistent with interna-tional law and based on scientificinformation. They also agreed toestablish by 2004 a regular processunder the UN for global reportingand assessment of the state of themarine environment. Justi notesthat the summit acknowledged theimportance of ICM. “As far as rec-ognizing ICM [being] a startingpoint [goes], it’s being recognized atthe highest levels,” he says.

More than ever, coastal environ-ments are affected by pollutionflowing hundreds of miles down-stream from sewage treatmentplants, subdivisions, and farms, andacross air currents from power plantsmokestacks. Today, there is a grow-ing consensus that coastal manage-ment needs a more integratedapproach across economic sectors,across inland watersheds andmarine resources, and across regula-tory agencies and institutions.

If there is any good to comefrom the devastation being wroughton the Earth’s coastal zones, perhapsit is that greater concentrations ofpeople and industry usually lowerthe costs of providing the infrastruc-

ture that reduces environmental contamina-tion—it’s much less expensive per capita tobuild a sewer treatment plant and sewer linesfor a densely populated city than for a sprawlingsmall town, for example. As more people moveto cities in the developing world, this could bean opportunity to provide crucial infrastructureand services that will protect the environmentrather than destroy it.

John TibbettsSton

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Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

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