Ten years on and ICZM is still somewhere on the distant horizon

A look back ten years to Inshore Ireland’s first lead story sees us bemoaning the lack of an effective, workable national policy for Integrated Coastal Zone Management. Looking deeper into that article, a key finding of a 2004 review of ICZM by the Heritage Council leaps out ― the stark reality that up to 2005 there had been no advances in policy or legislative developments for ICZM since the publication of a draft policy for Ireland in – 1997!

And staying with that first article we also reported that when compared to national case studies of how the policy of coastal management is handled in the UK, Norway, New Zealand and Australia, the Irish way of doing things is characterised by a sectoral approach to resource exploitation.

This almost chaotic and shambolic approach to designing and implementing a workable coastal zone policy is also complicated by the finding that progress is clearly hampered by a plethora of government departments, local authorities and national agencies – all apparently with roles to play in the management of the coastal area.

When it comes to ICZM policy in Ireland, ad hockery is the modus operandi of choice. Fast forward to seventeen years after government first dipped its toe into the undeniable complexities of defining a workable coastal policy, what has changed?

According to Dr Anne Marie O’Hagan ― a recognised expert on the law of coastal management from the Beaufort Laboratory in Cork ― sadly not much. Dr O’Hagan’s responses to our questions (see vol 10.1, pg 6) should be enough to make the reader sit up and take notice.

More importantly however, they should be a wake-up call for the politicians who, instead of progressing an imaginative, progressive and workable coastal zone policy, would appear to have turned a blind eye for fear of upsetting a myriad of vested interests.

What also emerges from this interview is that it may not in fact be a dereliction of political duty that has seen no real measure of progress in this area for some time. According to Dr O’Hagan, instead of pursuing Integrated Coastal Zone Management now there seems to be an EU-led preference instead for Maritime Spatial Planning.

Why?

Because, as she suggests, ICZM has always been seen as a strongly environmental-based management approach as opposed to one that fully addresses economic or social aspects.

According to Dr O’Hagan, MSP is very much advocated in the EU as being a driver to increase economic investment by providing more certainty to developers. MSP is viewed as one of the cross-sectoral tools essential for maximising the opportunity for economic growth from the ocean, so in that sense it could be more attractive to industry.

With our coastline now under threat from the ravages wrought by recent bad weather, there is no time to be lost to having a national debate on ICZM.