About Us

Welcome to the website of the Northern Ireland Coastal and Marine Forum. In Northern Ireland we are fortunate to live with a particularly beautiful and diverse coastline. We all use it and enjoy it in many different ways, as do hundreds of thousands of visitors every year. It is the wish of everyone that the coast will continue to provide livelihoods and enjoyment for future generations. To ensure that this will be the case, a system of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) is being developed and implemented in Northern Ireland. This is described in government’s 20-year ICZM strategy which is currently being implemented.

Managing the coast can be complex because of the variety of uses to which we put it. Some of these uses compete with each other and, because they have not been managed in an integrated way in the past, conflicts can arise. Integrated management seeks to reduce these conflicts and to create a sustainable coast. Our role in the Coastal and Marine Forum is to oversee and assist in the government’s implementation of ICZM through several different types of activity listed in our remit. The Forum’s members are drawn from a wide range of interest groups (fishing, ports, farming, conservation, tourism, recreation, communities and academia) and geographical areas (Causeway Coast, Strangford Lough and Mourne Coast). It is our hope that the collective expertise and experience within the Forum will help in improving the way the coast is managed.

On this website you will find a range of material related to coastal management in Northern Ireland. It includes not only information on the Forum itself, but also a range of educational resources and news on coastal issues. I hope you enjoy the site and, more importantly, our beautiful coast.

Professor Andrew Cooper

(Chair, Northern Ireland Coastal and Marine Forum)