Coastal zone resource management: tools for a participatory planning and decision making process

Coastal zones around the globe experience rapid development and change, and the Mediterranean, and in particular the Southern and Eastern parts, is undergoing dramatic demographic and related socio-economic development with growing and conflicting demands on natural resources. This leads to often irreversible degradation of these resources including the littoral and sub-littoral zones and thus the very basis for development. Two ongoing projects sponsored by the European Commission under the INCO framework address these issues with a combination of information technology, environmental sciences and engineering, and socio-economic analysis. The projects develop and explore methods and tools for longterm policy analysis and strategic decision support for integrated and sustainable coastal development with special emphasis on land use and water resources including coastal water quality. Parallel case studies in Turkey, Cyprus, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt, Tunisia and Morocco are used to test the methodology. The approach is based on the integration of quantitative and qualitative analysis, combining tools of quantitative analysis with methods of environmental, socio-economic and policy impact assessment using rule-based expert systems technology. Indicators and indices are used to link a cascade of modelling tools including land use change modelling, water resources modelling, and a coastal water quality model. The model system is used to obtain a realistic and detailed representation of spatially distributed and dynamic resource management strategies and development scenarios. In a final step, a discrete multicriteria optimisation methodology is used to provide input to an interactive and participatory policy and decision making process, involving local actors and stakeholders.