1. INTRODUCTION

In the early 1990's, integrated coastal management (ICM) in the Mediterranean basin found general acceptance as an important issue both at national and regional levels, and since then it has been, though slowly, steadily developed. Donor organisations such as the European Union and the World Bank, and the UNEP's Mediterranean Action Plan played catalyst roles in this development by initiating and supporting pilot projects. Parallel to this development, several NGO initiatives took place.

This paper presents the history of regional efforts for developing coastal management in the Mediterranean countries, including the contributions of MEDCOAST, an Euro-Mediterranean network of academic and professional institutions since 1993. It elaborates the priority issues at both national and regional levels, and the potential for an Euro-Mediterranean network to support and enhance the integrated coastal management efforts.

2. HISTORY OF THE MEDITERRANEAN ICM

Attention given to coastal management at academic levels in the Mediterranean started in the mid-80fs and at governmental and inter-governmental levels in the late 80's and early 90's. The first generation CAMPfs (Coastal Area Management Programmes, 1989-92) led by the Priority Actions Programme Regional Activity Centre (PAP RAC) in the framework of the Mediterranean Action Plan (MAP), a number of METAP projects of the World Bank, and assessment studies carried out by OECD were the early examples of coastal management efforts around the basin.

A significant regional effort for ICM in the Mediterranean at governmental level has been the Coastal Area Management Programme (CAMP) that has been implemented since 1989. These are two-to-four years long ICM projects (although they are called gprogrammeh) designed to address specific ICM needs of the countries. The projects have been designed and executed by PAP RAC, with involvement of other MAP centres, local institutions, foreign and local experts. Two groups of CAMPs, including the projects for Albania, Croatia, Egypt, Greece, Israel, Malta, Syria and Turkey, have been completed. The last group of CAMPs ongoing in 2002 include the projects for Algeria, Lebanon, Morocco and Slovenia .⁽¹⁾

In the framework of the Mediterranean Action Plan, the Mediterranean Commission for Sustainable Development (MCSD) that became operational in 1996 has dealt with integrated coastal management among other environmental and development issues that is important for the Mediterranean region. In fact, one of the first themes undertaken by MCSD was the Mediterranean coastal management. The recommendations of MCSD on gintegrated and sustainable management of coastal areash, which are of rather general nature, were approved by the contracting parties of the MAP during their 10^th Ordinary Meeting (Tunis, 1997).

Since the early 1990fs, the EU has also played a major role in the development of ICM in the Mediterranean. The Mediterranean programs that were launched in 1992 provided a dynamic environment for the region-wide decentralised cooperation of NGOfs (universities, research centres, municipalities, and others) in several priority issues including environmental management in general and integrated coastal management in particular. Several important initiatives that were seeded by the Mediterranean programs of the EU (like MEDCOAST and MEDCITIES networks), have survived to date (although the MED programs were stopped in 1996), and have contributed to regional collaboration for information exchange and capacity building in coastal management.

The EU Demonstration Programme for Coastal Area Management has also been a significant effort for enhancing coastal management. The programme that was launched in 1996 for identifying the actions to be taken against deterioration of the European coastal zones supported twelve projects (out of thirty-five) in the Mediterranean countries. A product of this programme was a policy document entitled gRecommendations for Coastal Area Managementh. Unfortunately, the lessons-learned from the twelve Mediterranean projects have not yet been synthesised for drawing up specific conclusions and recommendations for the Mediterranean region that could have helped guiding future coastal management efforts both at national and regional levels.

Two other programs of the EU addressing coastal management are LIFE-3C and SMAP. Neither of these programs is exclusively for coastal management, although ICM is one of the priority areas. The LIFE-3C scheme addresses basically projects of local or at most national scale with minor regional elements. The experiences from the national LIFE-3C projects have been very rarely made available to the Mediterranean community. SMAP (Short and Medium-term Priority Environmental Action Programme), which is a program adopted in Helsinki in 1997 in the framework of the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership, envisages regional collaboration in projects falling under five priority fields, integrated coastal management being one of them. The pace of SMAP has been rather slow. The impacts of this program to improvement of environmental management issues are yet limited.

The Mediterranean Technical Assistance Programme (METAP) has been operational since 1990. The programme was launched in partnership by the World Bank, European Investment Bank, the European Commission (EC) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP). gIntegrated water and coastal managementh was picked up as one of the three areas in the third phase of METAP (1996-2000), although METAP had supported small projects on ICM since its initiation in 1990. Similar to LIFE-3C program, the projects supported by METAP usually have national scope. METAP started an gintegrated coastal zone management programmeh in March 2001 with financial support of the Government of Finland. The main objective of this program is gto assist METAP countries to strengthen their capacity to deal with the continuous environmental degradation of their coastal zones^h(2).

On the NGO side, MEDCOAST, an Euro-Mediterranean network of academic and professional institutions established in 1992, has been operating for contributing to national and regional capabilities and efforts on integrated coastal management. The directions pursued by MEDCOAST for achieving its mission are: a) enhancement of the dissemination and sharing of scientific information and knowledge useful for ICM; b) building human resources for addressing coastal management needs with modern tools and instruments; c) providing scientific support to national and regional ICM programs and projects; and d) offering data and information management at the Mediterranean/Black Sea levels. Since the first international conference in 1993, MEDCOAST has organised five events of the bi-annual conference series, one specialty conference, two workshops, and two regional consultation meetings, and has published fifteen volumes of conference / workshop proceedings totalling 9120 pages. During 1994-2002, MEDCOAST conducted six MEDCOAST Institutes on gintegrated coastal management in the Mediterranean and the Black Seah, that provided training to 114 participants. Another program series for international training offered by MEDCOAST has been the gbeach managementh courses, which have been organised five times during 1995-2000. The total number of MEDCOAST alumni in 2002 is 226, distributed to 34 countries.

3. PRIORITY FIELDS OF ICM

A good part of the Mediterranean coastal areas along the northern shores have already been developed, and high levels of anthropogenic pressure originate from the existing human activities. A significant part of the anthropogenic pressure on the coastal zones along the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean on the other hand stems from the new development projects in the fields of urbanisation, tourism and recreation, marine transportation, energy, industry, fisheries and aquaculture, and agriculture.

The coastal management issues that are of regional concern in the Mediterranean are the followings:

1. Uncontrolled urban growth.

2. Mass tourism developments and adverse

impacts of tourism

3. Pollution of coastal waters from land-based

sources

4. Solid waste management and litter pollution

5. Water scarcity and freshwater demand

6. Loss of marine and coastal biodiversity

7. Loss of pristine land and sea scapes, damage to

cultural sites

8. Building and development too close to the sea

9. Improper coastal land use (site selection) for

industry, marine transportation infrastructure,

aquaculture facilities

10. Coastal erosion.

11. Decline of marine fisheries

12. Operational and accidental pollution by oil

marine debris from maritime traffic

Several of the issues of regional concern listed above, such as water pollution, litter, biodiversity, coastal erosion, marine fisheries and oil pollution have transboundary consequences and necessarily call for regional management efforts. On the other hand, some of these regional issues like tourism, marine fisheries and coastal erosion have traditionally not been fully addressed by the Mediterranean Action Plan.

The relative importance of several specific integrated coastal management issues and national capabilities for the fifteen METAP countries are indicated in Table 1. It is observed that majority of the issues listed in Table 1 are of serious concern over the whole region Table 1 also indicates the importance of several elements of the national capabilities of the METAP countries for managing their coastal areas.

The subjects of the papers presented by authors from the Mediterranean countries in five events (1993-2001) of the bi-annual MEDCOAST conference series were reviewed for finding out the popularity of several coastal management issues in the Mediterranean. Table 2 provides the number of papers in the corresponding subjects reported in five MEDCOAST conferences. (Coastal and Marine Pollution and Degradation, Pollution Assessment, Bioaccumulation), (Water Quality Issues, Water Pollution, Water Quality Management, Sea Outfalls), (Beaches, Beach and Dune Management), (Coastal Engineering), (Coastal and Marine Biology, Fauna and Flora, Microbiology, biochemistry) appear to be the most popular subject groups with 33 to 40 papers. With 23 to 29 papers in each, the next popular subjects are: (Coastal and Marine Conservation and Preservation, Protected Areas), (Sediment Transport, Coastal Processes, Coastal Erosion, Coastal Protection), (Coastal and Marine Ecology and Ecosystems, Ecosystem Management), (Coastal Management, National and Regional ICM Practices). It is interesting to notice two points from the numbers in Table 2. One of these is the very low level of reports on the social sciences contribution to coastal management like Coastal and Marine Policy, Legislation, Socio-Economic Aspects, Social Issues, Training & Education, Public Awareness, and International Co-operation, with a total of 22 papers in all in five conferences. The

Table 1: Relative importance of ICM issues and national capabilities (Score shows the average score out of 3 indicating the importance of the issue, Range shows the number of METAP countries -out of 15- where the issue is significant)

ICM Issues	Score	Range
Change in hydrological cycles	2.9	15
Pollution of water supplies	2.9	14
Urbanisation	2.8	15
Urban wastewater discharge	2.8	15
Industrial wastewater discharge	2.7	13
Tourism development	2.6	15
Fragmentation of habitat	2.6	14
Biodiversity of regional importance	2.5	14
Reduction in stream flow	2.4	14
Agricultural land use	2.4	13
Freshwater aquifers	2.3	15
Sea-level change	2.3	14
Solid waste / debris	2.2	14
Loss of ecosystems / ecotones	2.1	14
Oil spills	2.1	14
Coastal erosion	2.1	13
Eutrophication	2.1	9
Alien invasive species	2.0	6
Mineral extraction	1.7	12
National capabilities
Legal framework	2.9	15
Institutional capability/coordination	2.8	15
Public & private participation	2.7	13
Protected areas	2.6	15
Pilot projects on ICM	2.5	15

second point is the absence of reports on restoration and rehabilitation of already damaged areas, habitats and ecosystems.

4. FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

As it has been demonstrated by the earlier discussion, there have been very significant efforts in the Mediterranean at the governmental or intergovernmental levels since the early 1990fs for enhancing integrated coastal management. Impacts of these efforts however have been limited due to a number of reasons. Firstly, there has been very little co-operation and synergy between the programs of different organisations (EU, MAP, and METAP) until recently. Secondly, the dialog and the cross-fertilisation among the programs of the international organisations and the Mediterranean scientific community have been only very occasional. Experiences from specific projects have seldom been reported to the Mediterranean audience of professionals and scientists, and have been the subject for discussion. This has been an important impediment against building up of the Mediterranean experience of coastal management over a continuous accumulation and synthesis of experiences in a time frame.

Dialog and collaboration among the inter-governmental institutions and programs on one hand, and the Mediterranean scientific and professional community on the other was one of the important inspirations behind MEDCOAST, which is a non-governmental Euro-Mediterranean Network of academic and professional organisations, bringing together fifteen (as of 2002) universities, research centres and professional networks from eleven countries (Croatia, Egypt, France, Israel, Italy, Malta, Netherlands, Spain, Tunisia, Turkey, and United Kingdom)⁽³⁾. The MEDCOAST Secretariat administers the network, which is presently located in the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Broadly speaking the mission of MEDCOAST is to support sustainable development of coastal areas and coastal waters in the Mediterranean and Black Sea, by collecting, developing and disseminating knowledge on the structure and processes within the natural coastal environment and the way they are affected by human usage.⁽⁴⁾ MEDCOAST aims to contribute to coastal and marine conservation in the Mediterranean and the Black Sea, through improved coastal management practices. This goal is pursued by enhancing scientific and professional collaboration among individuals and institutes (networking) in the Mediterranean & Black Sea countries, or elsewhere, for the purposes of:⁽⁵⁾

a) Producing means to improve our understanding of physical, bio-chemical and ecological processes taking place in the Mediterranean and Black Sea coastal and sea environment, and their Interactions with human activities, (research component);

Table 2: Subjects of the papers presented by authors from Mediterranean countries in five meetings of the

MEDCOASTfs bi-annual international conference series on the Mediterranean coastal environment.

SUBJECT / MEDCOAST CONFERENCE	1993	1995	1997	1999	2001	TOTAL
Coastal & Marine Pollution & Degradation, Pollution Assess., Bio-accumulation	8	11	5	8	8	40
Water Quality Issues, Water Pollution, Water Quality Management, Sea Outfalls	6	10	9	6	9	40
Beaches, Beach and Dune Management	5	8	15	3	7	38
Coastal Engineering	4	10	6	10	6	36
Coastal and Marine Biology, Fauna and Flora, Microbiology, Bio-Chemistry	3	0	4	4	22	33
Coastal and Marine Conservation and Preservation. Protected Areas	5	6	4	7	7	29
Sediment Transport, Coastal Processes, Coastal Erosion, Coastal Protection	5	7	5	3	9	29
Coastal and Marine Ecology and Ecosystems, Ecosystem Management	0	7	2	5	14	28
Coastal Management, National and Regional ICM Practices	2	6	9	5	1	23
Deltas, Lagoons, Estuaries and Lakes	4	13	0	0	2	19
Physical Oceanography and Climatology, Geology	1	3	5	3	5	17
Remote Sensing, Data Management and GIS	3	5	4	1	4	17
Fisheries	0	0	3	0	11	14
Tourism and Recreation	0	3		3	6	12
Coastal and Marine Policy, Legislation	3	2	2	3	2	12
Environmental Impacts and Assessment	2	1	4	0	3	10
Modelling	2	5	0	3	0	10
Socio-Economic Aspects, Social Issues, Training & Education, Public Awareness	0	6	0	2	1	9
Sea Level Changes	2	1	0	0	2	5
Coastal Planning	0	3	0	0	1	4
Marine Transportation	0	0	0	2	0	2
International Co-operation	0	1	0	0	1	2
TOTAL	55	108	77	68	121	429

KEYWORDS: coastal management, Mediterranean, MEDCOAST

Table 1: Relative importance of ICM issues and national capabilities (Score shows the average score out of 3 indicating the importance of the issue, Range shows the number of METAP countries -out of 15- where the issue is significant)

ICM Issues

Score

Range

National capabilities

Table 2: Subjects of the papers presented by authors from Mediterranean countries in five meetings of the

MEDCOASTfs bi-annual international conference series on the Mediterranean coastal environment.

5. CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

KEYWORDS: coastal management, Mediterranean, MEDCOAST

Table 1: Relative importance of ICM issues and national capabilities (Score shows the average score out of 3 indicating the importance of the issue, Range shows the number of METAP countries -out of 15- where the issue is significant)

ICM Issues

Score

Range

National capabilities

Table 2: Subjects of the papers presented by authors from Mediterranean countries in five meetings of the

MEDCOASTfs bi-annual international conference series on the Mediterranean coastal environment.

5. CONCLUSIONS

REFERENCES

MEDCOASTfs bi-annual international conference series on the Mediterranean coastal environment.