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.

Relying on the results of multivariate analysis of the re-analysis case studies from the BaltCoast project, specific features of integrated coastal management (ICM) approaches in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Kaliningrad Oblast of the Russian Federation are highlighted in this paper. Eleven Eastern Baltic ICM case studies have been re-analyzed in-depth, which was the main focus of the present paper, covering a wide range of coastal landscapes, themes, policy issues, and ICM approaches. Five principal components explaining 84.86% of the total variance of ICM factor scores have been elicited by calculating rotation sums of squared loadings: (1) Stakeholder Involvement; (2) Research Base; (3) Planning Consistency; (4) Policy Environment, and (5) Development of Plans/Strategies. A truly dedicated involvement of a wide range of stakeholders throughout all process stages showed to be critical for further successful advance of ICM processes and principles based on the systems approach in the Baltic States and the Russian Federation.

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.