Global imperatives for coastal management

The above quote clearly illustrates the international importance of coastal and marine management. This is one of the major program areas dealt with in Chapter 17 of Agenda 21 (UNCED 1992), which is essentially the United Nations' blueprint for sustainable development (see page 207 for definition and discussion). At the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), often referred to as the ‘Earth Summit’, held in Rio de Janiero in 1992, there was a recognition that the world was beginning to live beyond its ecological means and that rapid action was necessary to avert future disaster (UNCED 1992). In this global context, the coast is particularly important for three reasons.

First, most of the world's population lives around the coast. There have been various estimates for just how many people live around the coast, and these estimates will differ depending on what definitions of ‘the coast’ are used. Agenda 21 (17.3) stated that in 1992 more than half of the world's population lived within 60 km of the coast, and that by the year 2020 this proportion could rise to two thirds. Hinrichsen (1998) quotes a figure of 3.2 billion people living within 200 km of the coast, on about 10% of the Earth's land area, and two thirds of the world's population already living within 400 km of the coast.