Riding the Waves of Change: Towards a joined up planning approach for coastal management

Abstract

The Australian coastal zone is experiencing increasing pressures from a number of global, national, regional and local drivers of change. Consequently, these highly dynamic and constantly evolving coastal landscapes are becoming increasingly characterised by higher degrees of complexity which require more proactive and sophisticated approaches to management than hitherto. Future management responses will need to address the complexity of unrelenting urbanisation and peri-urbanisation processes, evolving community expectations, future trends in outdoor recreation and coastal tourism, a wider range of threats to natural resources and environmentally sensitive coastal locations and the increasing competition for limited coastal resources. However past planning approaches have failed to adequately address these issues, particularly in the non urban environments and hence, environmental, natural resource, socio-economic and cultural values are at risk. All too often, traditional approaches have been compartmentalised, single purpose attempts to safeguard a narrowly defined or single objective. This paper will outline current thinking on integrated (joined up) planning approaches to address complex coastal landscape management in a proactive manner. The paper will be supported by examples of outcomes from current research into peri-urbanisation in high growth coastal regions and the evolving role of local government in regional coastal natural resource management.