Coastal Residents
Since the early 1990s over 50 Coastal Partnerships have been set up around the UK coast. These partnership initiatives have evolved from a ‘bottom-up’ approach, with people involved from local communities, clubs and user groups to local authorities, statutory agencies, industries, water companies, port & harbour authorities and NGOs.
We’re unique!
There is huge diversity in the approach of Coastal Partnerships, but they all have similar unique selling points which make them well placed to deliver ICZM:
- Impartiality and a proven role in conflict resolution and consensus building;
- The ability to work across sectors and between all levels of decision-making;
- Raising awareness of issues and a mechanism for community engagement;
- Horizon scanning to inform organisations of coastal issues;
- Attracting project funding and initiating collaborative ventures;
- Providing a gateway service and ‘one-stop-shop’ for information and contacts;
- Filling gaps where there are no sectoral responsibilities and mobilising voluntary support and involvement;
- Providing a (bottom-up) conduit to regional and national government;
Partnership approaches have been tried and tested in many fields and are becoming increasingly popular. Coastal partnerships specialise in providing services to help organisations deliver ICZM. There are other organisations and some partnership initiatives that deliver ICZM (e.g. AONBs with sections of coast, the European Marine Sites and Shoreline Management Groups) but they don’t offer the same core services which the existing voluntary Coastal Partnerships provide.
Achievements
Coastal Partnerships have existed for 10-15 years around the UK coast on ad-hoc funding contributions from local partners. On this basis they have provided significant value for money, levering in support, in-kind benefits and the goodwill of many partners. Many of the benefits are intangible; improved communication, understanding and awareness of coastal issues; access to information and contacts; new collaboration opportunities and research, advising on policy and planning, mobilising community involvement in decision-making; providing a neutral platform for debate; the list is long! Direct experience or a few examples can help to illustrate the achievements of Coastal Partnerships…but a key question facing Coastal Partnership Officers at this time is: what can we achieve?
