Sustainable development indicators for integrated coastal management: definition area and spatial properties

Abstract

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.

Integrated coastal management for local municipalities in Latvia: sustainability governance and indicator system

“…Here, the following cases can be distinguished [10]: special coastal indicators directly characterise some values characteristic of the coast only; coastal discernible indicators which characterise elements not directly coast and coastal relatively discernible indicators; indicators non-applicable to the coast, which characterise a factor in the overall territory. In the indicator system for Saulkrasti 18% of indicators are …”

“…The indicator system though which coastal sustainability is assessed should therefore be able to at least differ the coastal zone from the inland and provide a comparison, to establish the origin of impact factors on the coastal status and development trends, and to create understanding of the distribution of coastal impacts within the governance territory. Ideally, the term `coastal zone` should apply to a territory where the specific coastal impacts can be detected, and vice versa -a territory which impacts the developments on the coast and its proximity, as these impacts [10]: may in advance be unknown precisely enough; may change over time; differ for different factors; the specifics of spatial distribution of the data used may prevent their correct differentiation. In practice, the term 'coastal zone' is therefore applied to a relative territory which -within a single system -may in addition be applied in a number of ways depending on the data character.…”

“…Following are ICM development studies [6] in Latvia, particularly using Saulkrasti municipality case study research example, based on previous experiences [7][8][9] and approaches designed and implemented [10]. Description of Saulkrasti municipality in brief would include following.…”

“…The system was elaborated based on the analysis of four dimensions of sustainability (natural, social and economic environment, governance and communication) and integrative problem areas as defined on their points of intersection. In Saulkrasti municipality, the coast may be defined in the following ways based on the character of indicator data spatial distribution: coastal geometrical zone, which is formed as a coastal geometrical buffer; pointshaped measurement locations on the coast; coastal dune protection zone with adjacent protected biotopes; coastal 5 km-wide zone of limited economic activity, which can be adjusted depending on local geographical conditions [9,10]. For the last two, it is defined with the help of municipal spatial planning, in Saulkrasti its spatial plan is still under preparation.…”

“…The indicators were selected separately for characterising both the sustainability dimensions and integrative problem areas. By way of combining both resultant systems and assessing how the indicators refer to sustainability components, we divided all indicators into 4 groups [10]: sub-sectoral indicators and sectoral indicators -describe governance level-specific aspect or the whole sector of the respective sustainability dimension; integrative indicators -describe integrative problem areas and other processes which concerns at least two sustainability dimensions; integral indicators -describe the key, more general pointers of the governed system that characterise a given governance system in its entirety and/or compared to other similar systems.…”