Editorial
Strategies for sustainable coastal management in Asia and the Pacific—perspectives from a regional initiative

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Introduction

The coastal areas in the East Asian and Pacific region have experienced intense development and growth during the past few decades. Rapid growth in economy and population has been accompanied by adverse impacts on environmental quality and living resources in these areas. This has created a challenge for researchers, coastal managers and policy makers to understand both the nature of developmental impacts and the drivers behind them in order to devise effective strategies to respond to the trend of degradation in coastal habitats. Successful strategies have to be designed with due consideration to the socio-economic conditions as well as the state of coastal ecosystems in the region.

Over the past few years, United Nations University's (UNU's) work on coastal areas has focused on the critical threats to these ecosystems. It has identified key interventions to address the threats to coastal areas including community-based coastal management, awareness raising, human and institutional capacity development and monitoring the status of coastal ecosystems. The over-arching designation of “coastal hydrosphere” was created to encompass and to reflect the focus on assessment of water quality and living resources in the coastal areas. It is envisioned that important lessons relevant to environmental governance can be learnt from monitoring and assessment activities within the coastal hydrosphere. Some of the resulting recommendations by UNU to support policy-making are described in an upcoming publication (Adeel and Nakamoto, 2002).

Working through its network of researchers in the region, UNU has undertaken capacity-development work for coastal monitoring. This includes providing training opportunities for young researchers with a focus on coastal ecosystems, and offering support for the development of human and institutional capacity to undertake coastal monitoring. The elements of this capacity development for monitoring have specifically sought to deepen existing knowledge of land-based coastal pollutants. These include a group of pollutants called endocrine disruptor chemicals (EDCs) that adversely impact human and animal hormonal and immune systems.

This paper is divided into two components. The first section describes the health of coastal ecosystems, threats from anthropogenic activities and the drivers behind these impacts. The findings provided here are based on a broader set of data gathered in different elements of the UNU project. The second section provides an overview of the key recommendations that have emerged as a result of continuous and evolving dialogue between researchers, policy makers and the general public. It is important to note that this concentration on the science-policy nexus has allowed UNU to play an important supporting role for policy development in the region and in identifying the existing research gaps.

Section snippets

Status of coastal ecosystems

Coastal resources play a critical role in food security and livelihoods of the people living in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly for low-income groups. The sustainable utilization of these resources and their quality directly influences human health and economic viability, making coastal pollution a truly human life-threatening issue. The description here is limited to some of the more critical coastal habitats that can serve as sentinels of the overall ecosystem health; each ecosystem is

The driving forces behind coastal degradation

The activities that are the direct causes of coastal degradation are often driven by a series of trends related to the socio-economic development of this region. Rapid growth has occurred, particularly in most ASEAN countries. This has multiplied the anthropogenic impacts in coastal areas (particularly before the financial crisis that hit the region in 1997), leading to a rapid deterioration of the resources. The lure of short-term benefit, and a growing sense of economic instability have often

Strategies for protection of the coastal environment

A number of policy-making frameworks exist at different levels within the region and require skilful integration. UNU's work underlines the fact that policies can be strengthened and supplemented by the use of other interactive strategies, such as community involvement, public awareness building, human and institutional capacity building and the development of localized monitoring activities.

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