Studies being presented here have been done as initial part of wider research-and-developemnt (R&D) programme, aiming to investigate preconditions and all instruments set necessary for environmental governance adequate integration into legally required societal (sustainable) development governance/planning framework and municipal governance practice. This have been done studying governance by its triple complementary dimensions of governance content, governance process and governance stakeholders and approaching municipality as a complex and interactive socio-ecological system. Accordingly, pilot investigations have been done as various thematical case studies in preselected model municipalities – six studies/pilot studies, based on the integrated case study research methodology, including and complementary applying document studies, interviews, surveys, observations and focus groups. Existing development planning and other instruments combined with municipal planning capacities are neither sufficient nor effective, and, since step-wise developmental process for sustainability principle integration seems to be not perspective as quite similar also with integration principle as for complex planning process and also as for thematical meaning of integrations of environmental governance into develoment one. Since environmental sector planning documents are not mandatory anymore at local municipalities, environmental sector planning process and content in the development planning practice is often limited, but few ad hoc available and used formal environmental planning instruments are neither sufficient or used just temporaly. There is to be seen necessity to develop innovative methodologies and tools as done during this research-and-development project.

When designing a sustainability indicator system (SIS) within the integrated coastal management (ICM) development process, there are still to be encountered a number of difficulties in the constructing of the system both in the indicator selection process and later when analysing the system and assessing its degree of correspondence to the direct objective of application, reflecting the set of planning targets and accounting for the specifics of the particular coastal territory. During research and development work in the coastal municipalities in Latvia, particularly, in Saulkrasti municipality, there was developed municipal level SIS, being locally discussed and acknowledged by experts and municipality specialists. Saukrasti SIS was developed, based on the adaptation of the known theoretical approaches and previous national case studies research done. This practice based experience also gave an inspiration for a number of theoretical generalisations about coastal indicators definition area, their spatial properties and, especially, algorithmic scheme for designing sustainability indicators.

Municipal audit for integrated coastal management (ICM) development for local municipality includes analysis of stakeholders, document frame and planning process analysis, vertical governance assessment combined with sectorial analysis for all four dimensions of sustainability; nature environment, economics environment, social environment and also governance and communication dimension in Saulkrasti coastal municipality. ICM guidelines model frame were elaborated during this collaboration research project by University of Latvia performed in R&D cooperation with local authority and with involvement of all local stakeholder groups. Further on related indicator system based on these sustainability dimensions and designed ten main integrated work directions were elaborated, including 24 thematic groups with 55 indicators.

An appropriate characterization of preconditions and trends for decision-making towards the sustainable development of coastal territories in Latvia determines the need for further studies of existing wide experience and particular methods for development of European, nationwide and/or local coastal information systems. Analysis of the framework and content establishment as well as data gathering and calculation approaches for sustainable coastal development (SCD) indicators system creation, functioning and future challenges has been carried out based on a specific set of coastal indicators elaborated at the EU level, application experience of the related EU Interreg IIIC Deduce project and, particularly, the indicators system test run in Latvia, whilst also including the following practice evaluation by coastal municipalities and other main actors in the field.An initial SCD indicator system proposal for Latvia is elaborated, recognizing the main typical features of nature-environmental and socio-economic conditions, spatial scale and data gathering selective differences as well as identifying institutions and actors to be involved. The system proposal distinguishes 24 indicators, including ones for the assessment of the development of human resources and integrated management capacities, with this constituting the additional and most important SCD sector goal. These several integrative indicators shall provide information on integrated coastal sustainability and its management, particularly with regard to the efficiency of the coastal communication process. However, further testing and elaborations are required to secure the evaluation of coastal awareness, public participation, municipal planning and practice, as well as to integrate this together with well-tested bottom-up or participatory designed indicators system application.

Importance of sustainable coastal governance also in the baltic sea region has been widely recognised and since such governance has to have integrative nature that requires horizontal cross-sectorial integration as well as involvement of all governance levels and subsequently organisation of vertical integration among the levels. besides some succesfull local cases around Europe, mainly special outside projects based, there is to be recognized that the municipal integrated sustainable coastal governance has not been yet neither well and widely locally developed in practice nor sufficiently researched field in order to permit necessary design of adequate policy innovations. Practical development and local realisation of the municipal integrated coastal governance often encounters obstacles of the basic nature, e.g. because there are not sufficiently understood and applied cross-and trans-disciplinary approaches -studies and governance of the coastal territories as the complex social-ecological systems (sEs). For understanding the process and structure of coastal governance, application of system thinking and system dynamics methods are to be emphasized as well. the paper demonstrates adaptation of coastal nature studies based system Analysis Framework (sAF) methodology for its application to coastal governance studies and general municipal governance system adjusting and upgrading towards coastal issues, what could be seen as the new step for sAF further planned developments. As the part of the EU bONUs programme baltcoast project, the authors performed, including main stakeholders participation elements, the issue identification step, system definition and also a conceptual model building steps of the sAF methodology application in the particular, local governance innovations rich, case study territory -salacgriva municipality in Latvia. coastal governance problems in Latvia are especially relevant for rural coastal municipalities with limited administrative capacities and long and low populated coastline territories. the next sAF application steps will include development of coastal governance system scenarios using a systems modelling tool and the design and testing of complementary set of governance instruments as science-policy interface, that shall support sustainable use of coastal resources in the interests of coastal nature and culture protection, and local socio-economic development.