Evaluation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) in ...

Evaluation of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) in Europe – Final Report
(HELCOM) and is consequently being implemented by participating
member countries. Their establishment can further support the spatial
planning of sea areas. The Natura2000 Directive also offers interregional
cooperation opportunities. All Baltic Sea States are part of
the HELCOM conventions concerning the protection of the marine
environment. Baltic 21 and the Committee responsible for the Vision
and Strategies around the Baltic Sea 2010 Committee - VASAB 2010
(see next section) are actively supporting the ICZM Recommendation
implementation process.
Inter-regional
organisation
stipulate enlarged
network of Marine
Protected Areas
Community INTERREG Initiatives concerning cooperation on Spatial
Planning and Regional Development also offer tangible cooperative
structures. The INTERREG IIIB project SEAREG 23 , Sea Level
Change Affecting the Spatial Development in the Baltic Sea Region,
is a case in point that aimed at strengthening the linkages between
coastal planning and decision-making for different sea level change
scenarios affecting the Baltic countries.
Inter-regional organisations such as the pan-European Platform for
Coastal Research Coordination Action (ENCORA), the Project ICZM-
Oder, Research for an ICZM in the German Oder Estuary Region,
EUCC (The Coastal Union), the academic/research organisation
EUROCOAST, WWF-Baltic Programme, Coalition Clean Baltic, and
the Polish-Netherlands ICZM Workshops also exist, and are important
channels of cooperation; however their resulting impact on regional
coastal issues has remained weak.
At the local level, several inter-regional organisations exist on various
levels. The Finnish Regional Council, for example, coordinates
municipality-level policies, while the coordination of individual regional
councils takes place on a governmental level in the form of sectoral
framework plans. Also, regions and regional councils actively interact
with other regions in neighbouring States. The creation of the Baltic
Sea Region ICZM Platform, founded in 2003, is another cooperative
structure with the task to continue supporting the work done in the
individual countries by exchanging information about ICZM work
among the regional States and Baltic-wide organisations. Additionally,
bilateral agreements between EU and Non-EU States also exist, such
as between Lithuania and the Russian Federation, for the management
of coastal lagoons.
Low impact of
inter-regional
organisations
on regional
coastal issues
Interconnectedness to Regional Development Planning Mechanisms
On the regional level, the HELCOM Convention for the Baltic Sea
region is a most prominent legal agreement on the protection of
marine waters in a supra-national scale, linking all the Baltic States
together and providing added impetus in fields such as pollution
control and spatial planning.
This Baltic-wide coordination within HELCOM, which was initiated by
Finland, offers a strong connection to regional development. In 1996,
the Prime Ministers of the Baltic Sea Region took the initiative to
23 The SEAREG project focuses on the socio-economic and environmental assessment of climate change in the Baltic Sea
Region (BSR) specially the sea level rise and the changing runoff patterns of rivers.
http://www.gsf.fi/projects/seareg/index.html
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