Abstract
Coasts are the point at which the land, sea, and air meet. They provide people with a rich array of benefits, from diverse food sources to a diversity of livelihood and economic opportunities, a special place to live, a popular destination for holiday-making and recreation, aswell as providing a setting for many communities to practice long-standing traditional cultural and spiritual practices. In short, coasts are a special place for human settlement and development as particularly reflected in recent trends of rapidly growing coastal populations, coastal cities and towns,
and development intensification. The likely results of this change will undoubtedly include an intensification of land-sea interactions as well as the emergence of new conflicts over coastal use
between, for instance, wind farming, fisheries, and shipping. Spatial planning and the administrative
integration of land and sea have become crucial components of national ICZM strategies.
Antagonistic interests and rival stakes must be resolved to achieve balanced, satisfactory, and fair use of coastal resources. ICZM has been developed in recent decades to promote more sustainable coastal development: to ensure that current and future generations can continue to enjoy and realise the manifold benefits of coastal ecosystems.
