Governing the Land-Sea Interface to Achieve Sustainable Coastal Development

Abstract

Coastal regions are essential to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) given their importance for human habitation, resource provisioning, employment, and cultural practice. They are also regions where different ecological, disciplinary, and jurisdictional boundaries both overlap and are obscured. We thus propose the land-sea interface as areas where governance systems are most in need of frameworks for systems analysis to meet the SDGs—which are inherently interconnected— and integrate complex interdependencies between human livelihoods, energy, transport, food production, and nutrient flows (among others). We propose a strategic land-sea governance framework built on the sustainable transitions literature to plan for governance to achieve sustainable development across the land-sea interface. To illustrate our proposal, we compare governance planning processes across four case-based scenarios: an industrialized coastal country, a least developed coastal country, a developing coastal country with local dependencies on ocean resources, and a small island developing state primarily dependent on tourism. Through the lens of aligning governance actors and actions vertically (subnational to national), horizontally (across sectors), and programmatically (from goals to implementation), we propose scales at which governance systems may be misaligned, such as where different agencies that affect marine systems have conflicting visions and goals, leading to stalled progress or counterproductive actions. Where possible, we also highlight strategies to align across scales of high level strategic policy, tactical scale institutional mandates and cooperation, and on the ground activities and operations, such as aligning actors based on an analysis of interdependencies of goals.

Accounting for direct and indirect cumulative effects of anthropogenic pressures on salmon- and herring-linked land and ocean ecosystems

“…marbled murrelets, salmon), up to two-thirds of the total cumulative risk might be underestimated if marine linkages are ignored (electronic supplementary material, table S7). We show that cross-realm species are more vulnerable because they are not only exposed to multiple pressures but they also usually have more links with other ecosystem components through their prey, multiple cross-realm predators, and use of multiple habitats ([42], table 1, figure 1). These results support calls for land-sea assessments to be done simultaneously rather than independently as is more generally done.…”

Bibliometrics and visualization analysis of research in the field of sustainable development of the blue economy (2006–2021)

“…In particular, the blue economy with the theme of sustainable and high-quality development of the marine economy will also provide the possibility and important material guarantees for the eradication of poverty (SDG1), the eradication of hunger (SDG2), and the reduction of inequalities within and among countries (SDG10) (Hernańdez-Delgado, 2015;Leslie et al, 2015). Therefore, it is crucial and urgent to promote the transformation of the marine development model, maintain the health of the marine ecological environment, and achieve high-quality and sustainable development of the blue economy (Weiand et al, 2021;Singh et al, 2021).…”

Sociocultural Dimension of Land–Sea Interactions in Maritime Spatial Planning: Three Case Studies in the Baltic Sea Region

“…These dynamics of spatial planning co-exist with metageographies and spatial imaginaries that generate context for interactions between land and sea [1]. The role of land-sea interactions in MSP is stressed in recent studies [9][10][11]. Land-sea interfaces as terraqueous spaces are analysed, for example, in the context of the mobilised territoriality of adjacency rights for fishing shrimp [12] and terraqueous urbanism related to oil extraction [13].…”