Regulating Coastal Zones

International Perspectives on Land Management Instruments

Rachelle Alterman, Cygal Pellach

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429779756
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Urban Planning & Landscaping

Regulating Coastal Zones addresses the knowledge gap concerning the legal and regulatory challenges of managing land in coastal zones across a broad range of political and socio-economic contexts.

In recent years, coastal zone management has gained increasing attention from environmentalists, land use planners, and decision-makers across a broad spectrum of fields. Development pressures along coasts such as high-end tourism projects, luxury housing, ports, energy generation, military outposts, heavy industry, and large-scale enterprise compete with landscape preservation and threaten local history and culture. Leading experts present fifteen case studies among advanced-economy countries, selected to represent three groups of legal contexts: signatories to the 2008 Mediterranean ICZM Protocol, parties to the 2002 EU Recommendation on Integrated Coastal Zone Management, and the USA and Australia.

This book is the first to address the legal-regulatory aspects of coastal land management from a systematic cross-national comparative perspective. By including both successful and less-effective strategies, it aims to inform professionals, graduate students, policy makers, and NGOs of the legal and socio-political challenges as well as the better practices from which others could learn.

Part I

Framing

1 Introduction

Objectives and method of comparative analysis

Rachelle Alterman and Cygal Pellach

Everyone loves a pristine beach. But almost everyone (in the Global North) also likes to own land and live near the beach, to vacation in hotels on the beach, to go to country clubs located next to the beach, or at least to be able to view the beach from their home or office. Coastal locations often have a real estate premium in many countries (see for example, Markandya et al., 2008). Coastal zones are often also attractive to government agencies constructing roads and other national or local infrastructure, and many old industries are still located near the coast.

The rationale for Integrated Coastal Zone Management

Throughout human history, coastal zones have been important for livelihood and transportation. A major portion of humanity has always resided close to the coast, and still does (about 40% live within 100 km of the coast; UN, 2017). The environmental consequences of the anthropogenic (human-generated) pressures on the coast and its landscapes are much studied and discussed, but insufficient attention is devoted to the real-property aspects of coastal land. In order to improve coastal zone conservation, the land management aspects must receive more research attention. In the era of growing awareness of climate change and its intensified impacts in coastal regions, the real-property aspects are likely to become even more acute. Adaptation measures to sea level rise or extreme storm events along the coasts inevitably come up against issues related to land property rights.

Any book on coastal zones will note that they are unique and complex environments that warrant special measures for their conservation (see for example, Schernewski, 2016; Portman, 2016). The environmental assets, including the unique landscapes, are especially threatened by the heightened development pressures in coastal zones. Therefore, coastal regions have been recognized as meriting a special decision-guidance model – Integrated Coastal Zone Management, ICZM (Portman, 2016; Kay & Alder, 2005, pp. 8–9). One of the earlier, highly cited books devoted entirely to coastal management offers this definition of ICZM:

… a conscious management process that acknowledges the interrelationships among most coastal and ocean uses and the environment they potentially affect. ICM is a process by which rational decisions are made concerning the conservation and sustainable use of coastal and ocean resources and space. The process is designed to overcome the fragmentation inherent in single-sector management approaches … in the splits in jurisdiction among different levels of government, and in the land-water interface (Cicin-Sain et al., 1998, p.1).

The above definition of ICZM and many similar ones present an ideal that can never be fully implemented, but they do set a direction for policymakers (Garriga & Losada, 2010, p. 89; Portman, 2016, p. 69). The ICZM idea has come a long way since it was first introduced in legislation in the USA in 1972 (Belknap, 1980; Felleman, 1982). In recent decades, ICZM has become widely accepted around the world as the guiding paradigm for policymaking about coastal zones (Cullinan, 2006; Portman, 2016; Ahlhorn, 2017; Ramkumar et al., 2019). Many countries have adopted laws, regulations, and policies in that direction.

Purpose and structure of this work

Unlike much of existing literature that focuses on what should be done in terms of better land-management and governance norms towards ICZM, this book addresses what is being applied de facto, juxtaposing and comparing current practices with the ICZM norms. The focus is on the laws and regulations and how they manifest in practice. In order to help to move the ICZM ideals from books, treaties, laws, and regulations to actual practice, policymakers need a “reality check” to gauge feasibility, identify impediments, or consider alternative approaches, some based on learning from other countries. To that end, we ask, what specific land-related laws, regulations, or policies have in fact been adopted and implemented by a relatively large set of countries.

This book joins a large number of publications about ICZM, created over decades by researchers from a broad range of disciplines. In order to position our book's contribution within the current body of knowledge, we distinguish among three “pillars” of ICZM:

• Pillar 1: Coastal environmental dynamics (not discussed in this book)
• Pillar 2: Land demarcation and property rights
• Pillar 3: Modes of governance and institutions

The first pillar is outside the scope of this book. It is grounded in environmental sciences, addressing the interrelationships among the various aspects of the marine and terrestrial environments. The purpose is to provide decision makers with a multidisciplinary understanding of the special attributes of the coastal environment, its landscapes, and their dynamics.

The second pillar, pertaining to land demarcation and property rights, could be seen as the “hardware” in the kit of tools of ICZM. In this book, we focus especially on the role of laws and regulations pertaining to coastal land and how they are practised on the ground. Topics include demarcation of zones for special protection, private and public property rights and the regulations that restrict development and direct the use of land. The literature on this topic is the least abundant among the three pillars.

The third pillar of ICZM focuses on governance. One could see this as the “software” in the kit of ICZM tools. This pillar, like the first (but unlike the second), has benefited from considerable research attention, mostly with a general institutional perspective, rather than the legal-regulatory perspective adopted here. Previous research has usually highlighted the persistent problems of high fragmentation among the many coast-related government bodies and the difficulties in reaching coordinated decisions, and proposes approaches to improve institutional set-ups and better governance (superbly explained by Portman, 2016; see other examples in Cicin-Sain et al., 1998 and Ahlhorn, 2017).

In this book, we address the third pillar from the special perspective of the second pillar – the land-related laws and regulations. Our analysis encompasses the following issues: Coordination among institutions in charge of land-related policy and implementation, especially land use planning; integration of the land-related subject areas and across the land–sea divide; public participation; and capacity to enforce infringements of land-related rules. In the era of climate change, we added questions about the degree of institutional awareness of the need for adaptation to sea level rise or other climate-related challenges. We also look at the capacity of the laws themselves to adapt to climate change (Arnold, 2013).

The book has a three-tier structure of analysis: National, cross-national, and supra-national. For each tier, we address the relevant laws, regulations, and practices of land-related ICZM. Across each of the tiers, the book makes a unique contribution to the current state of knowledge both in its subject matter and in its selection of countries. This is also the first book to address all three levels and the interrelationships among them.

At the national tier, the book encompasses a large (non-random) sample of fifteen national jurisdictions selected according to specific criteria. Each country report has been written by one or more experts from that country. The country chapters are the heart of the book. Each country chapter follows a rigorous framework based on a shared set of topics, which we call “parameters”, to be introduced in detail in Chapter 2. Each individual country report stands as a unique contribution to the state of knowledge about that specific country. The picture that emerges is of a (surprisingly) high degree of variety among the laws, regulations, and practices about ICZM.

The second tier – the cross-national analysis – is made possible through the systematic structure of the country reports. At this level, we as editors collate and compare the rich information provided by the country chapters in order to offer the readers opportunities for cross-learning. There is not much previously reported analysis of land regulation in the framework of ICZM that is based on a rigorous cross-national comparative perspective. Notable research efforts to date are Boelaert-Suominen & Cullinan (1994), Cicin-Sain et al. (1998), Markandya et al. (2008), Ahlhorn (2017, pp. 23–31), and Karnauskaite˙ et al. (2018). These pioneering publications, however, do not delve into questions concerning implementation. This book goes beyond, both in scale and breadth.

The third tier – the supra-national level – is relevant to thirteen of the countries. They each come under one or more set of rules enunciated through international law or supra-national policy intended as guidance to improve ICZM among the signatory states. Yet, in reading the country reports, one is struck by the absence of references to these relevant supra-national documents (except occasionally, when introduced during the editorial process). Although this fact foreshadows some of our findings, it does not diminish the importance of looking at the performance of the international efforts. There is not yet much research attention to the degree of influence of the supra-national ICZM norms on national laws and policies. Among the few contributions in this category are several excellent analyses by the team of Rochette and Billé (Rochette & Billé, 2010, 2013; Billé & Rochette, 2011, 2015; see also González-Riancho et al., 2009). To date, however, researchers have addressed only a handful of countries.

Over the remainder of this chapter, we introduce the supra-national laws and their implications; present the rationales for country selection; and discuss the methodology of analysis and its limitations.

Supra-national ICZM law: Shunning intervention in land rights

In 2008, a daring leap was taken when ICZM first entered the realm of international law. After several years of consideration under UN auspices (Markandya et al., 2008; Sanò et al., 2011), the Protocol on Integrated Coastal Zone Management for the Mediterranean was adopted, henceforth, the Mediterranean ICZM Protocol (UNEP, 2008). A few years earlier, in 2002, the EU adopted a supra-national policy document on ICZM endorsed by all its member states. However, adoption of international laws or policies is easier than their implementation by national and local governments, especially where land and property rights are concerned. Throughout this book, we will learn to what extent the real-property aspect...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Contributors
• PART I Framing
• PART II Country reports
• PART III Comparative analysis and evaluation
• Index