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The future development of sea use management in Europe
Ocean & Coastal Management 18 (1992) 187-196
The Future Development of Sea Use Management in Europe H. D. Smith & C. S. L a l w a n i Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport, University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff, UK (Paper presented at the IGU Marine Geography Meeting, Wilhelmshaven, May 1989)
ABSTRACT Sea use management originated largely in Europe, initially along the lines of individual use groups. Before the middle of the present century these included navigation, strategic uses, fisheries and marine science. Subsequently the major uses expanded and diversified. The organisations involved and their geographical spheres of influence may be classified into local and national, regional and global categories. Management organisations share basic objectives including safety, allocation, environmental control, research and regional development. Technical management functions are concerned with interactions between activities and the environment and include technological, environmental, social and information management groups. General management includes co-ordination of technical management, organisational aspects and regional considerations including policy aspects.
INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to consider the future of sea use management in Europe, taking due account of past developments and the present state of the field. The discussion thus begins with aspects of the development of sea use management to date, followed by consideration of the organisational hierarchy which has evolved to carry out management functions, and the management objectives which 187 Ocean & Coastal Management 0964-5691/92/$05.00 © 1992 Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd, England. Printed in Northern Ireland
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have, to varying degrees, been shared throughout this evolution. This is followed by a consideration of technical management aspects, which arguably constitute the practical starting point for future, integrated sea use management developments. Finally, general management, policy and integration are considered, where a primary consideration is the regionalisation of sea use management in Europe.
D E V E L O P M E N T ASPECTS Europe is the cradle of sea use management. Most of the early developments took place in European seas, especially those of northern Europe, along the lines of the individual uses. The seventeenth-century conflicts between the English and the Dutch, rooted in overseas expansion and fisheries, may be regarded as marking the commencement of the evolution of the present management of sea uses. Early developments were concentrated in the management of navigation, naval activity, fisheries and marine science. The management of navigation has its roots in the Middle Ages, notably in the provision of pilotage services in relation to key ports and rivers. Other elements in this system are also old, such as the provision of lighthouses, buoys, charts and other navigation aids either nationally or by individual ports; the development of emergency services such as lifeboats; and surveillance by coastguard services. The regulation of shipping is also rooted in Europe, in the origins of the famous classification societies of Britain, Germany and Norway. The development of fisheries regulation is likewise distinctively European, beginning with the traditional national fishing limits dating from the early conflicts in the law of the sea, and progressing to the gear regulations, closed areas and seasons, and quotas of later times. The early conservation failures were European-based, notably the failure of the Great Northern Whale Fishery in the 1880s; and the problems of the Baltic herring and Danish plaice fisheries related to the early history of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), conceived in the 1890s and established in 1902. The establishment of ICES was in some ways a consolidation of the marine research developments sparked off by the global voyage of HMS Challenger in the 1870s. While the principal sphere of ICES can be described as European, and later North Atlantic, it too has had a global influence in its field, both directly and indirectly. The pioneering of oceanographic and fisheries research both separately and hand-inhand was accomplished by a small number of European nations in
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which Britain, France, G e r m a n y and the Scandinavian countries loom large. Last among the four early groups of uses is the naval or strategic use of the sea. Until the end of the First World War, naval development in both peace and war was principally focused on Europe, including even the famous actions of John Paul Jones during the American War of Independence. Naval actions not fought in E u r o p e a n waters were mainly fought between or among rival E u r o p e a n nations around the world ocean, with notable beginnings in the Seven Years War of 1756-1763, even if later strategic treaties were American 1 or Soviet. 2 After the Second World War, the general intensification and diversification of economic activity expressed itself in the uses of the sea. The four 'old' use groups underwent this process, and four 'new' use groups emerged in a m a n a g e m e n t context. These latter four included waste disposal, which was to become a major focus of m a n a g e m e n t developments; marine recreation, which diversified beyond the seaside holiday resorts of the late-nineteenth century; the exploitation of mineral resources, in which E u r o p e led the way with sand and gravel; and the North Sea became the global testing ground for deep water offshore engineering in severe environments while dealing with all the inter-use conflicts involved. Finally, the processes of intensification and diversification of uses have given rise to conservation as a specific use in its own right, which may at times have precedence over all other uses in specific coastal and marine areas. Conservation now extends far beyond the idea of conserving commercial fish species, which was a central tenet of fisheries management, to conservation of habitats and whole coastal and marine eco-systems. It is in this latter respect that the emergence of regional m a n a g e m e n t discussed below may gain its greatest impetus.
ORGANISATIONS AND REGIONS The sea use m a n a g e m e n t system which has evolved with the development of individual use groups may be considered in terms of organisations involved in m a n a g e m e n t at several regional scales. The significant developments are arguably first, the local and national developments, where specialised agency functions are characteristic; the regional dimension, which tends to be focused on specific seas and ocean areas and relates primarily to the water column; and the global scale, relating primarily to shipping, navigation and marine science activities, where there is a European c o m p o n e n t and often a large E u r o p e a n influence.
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The local and national scales are intimately related. It is convenient to begin with the national governments whose legislative, administrative and statistical responsibilities are the cornerstone of sea use management. However, much of the technical m a n a g e m e n t is devolved in agency form, for example, in fisheries and regional development. The key agency responsibilities are arguably those which are locally organised and run. First of these agency groups are the port authorities, which are of longest standing and perhaps most obviously maritime. Their functions revolve around the m a n a g e m e n t of navigation and m o v e m e n t of goods and passengers. Because most ports are situated in large towns, or sometimes on green-field sites in the case of bulk handling terminals, and also because in Europe shipping activity is increasingly concentrated in large ports, both the environmental impacts associated with port operations on the one hand, and of the towns on the other, are considerable. Ports have thus come to exercise emergency planning and pollution control responsibilities as well as their more conventional navigational activities. Port authority sea areas are frequently the most intensively used 'urban' sea areas of all, and it is reasonable to assume that, for the largest ports, pressures for multiple use m a n a g e m e n t will tend to grow. The European ports as a group also participate in shipping management standards through the Paris M e m o r a n d u m for Port State Control. This leads naturally to consideration of the land side of multiple use management, a function traditionally exercised by local municipal authorities within a national land use planning framework. The significance of the land use planning system in the present context is twofold: the basic principle of spatial allocation can be applied seawards, and there is pressure to do this on urban coasts, such as the South Coast of England, and on rural coasts intensively managed for recreation and conservation purposes, such as national parks. Secondly, the implications of land use planning on the adjacent seas is of course direct, as for example, in the location of sea outfalls. The role of river basin m a n a g e m e n t organisations is, of course, also of long standing and naturally extends in many cases from responsibility for fresh water quality management to coastal water quality management, fisheries and coastal defences. This function is crucial to coastal and sea use management, as the influence of Europe's large rivers on adjacent seas clearly demonstrates. The Rhine is best known in this respect, but others include the Rhone, Po, Danube, Thames, Elbe, Oder and Vistula. If port and local authorities are to be the principal sea use planners, the water authorities will have a primary role in the management of the water column.
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The second group of organisations is regional, and concerned mainly with fisheries and pollution control, and hence with the water column rather than the sea bed, although the North Sea is something of a special case. For fisheries, the initial approach has been that of the regional commission, for the North East Atlantic, Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltic. Their role which was arguably not very effective, has become residual for two reasons, namely, the extension of coastal state jurisdiction, and the development of the Common Fisheries Policy of the European Community, especially since the 1973 accession of the UK, Ireland and Denmark, and subsequent expansion of the Community to include the leading fishing nations of Spain and Portugal. The most effective management on the seaward side to date has probably been that of Iceland, and a combination of coastal state management and CFP seems to be the future: the latter in the core regional seas and the former in the periphery where special regional arrangements are necessary to safeguard fishing communities. The role of ICES as a scientific adviser to the management bodies remains important. In the case of pollution control, most developments are post-1970, and again regionally based on the same sea regions. The basic approach is that of the commission, and the future seems to be a combination of these, EC directives and the role of the water authorities based on national legislation, presumably increasingly attuned to the European dimension. The comparison with the fisheries is important, because it will be instructive in the delineation of effective mixes of national, international and supranational approaches. The North Sea is something of a special case in that, although the primary focus is upon pollution control, regional management appears to be evolving differently, in two ways. First, there is already a multiple use management awareness underlying the pollution theme to some extent. Secondly, progress is currently occurring via a series of Ministerial Conferences rather than through a international convention. Further, the Dutch have taken the initiative in building a more comprehensive management and planning approach to their sector, 3 which will undoubtedly have to be extended both in principle and practice if integrated management is to become a reality. The third management area is the global, international one. Here the principal developments relate to shipping and navigation, and marine science. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and International Maritime Satellite Organisation (INMARSAT) have, of course, well recognised roles in shipping and navigation, mirroring the ports to some extent in pollution control. These are appropriately based in London, perhaps evidence of the British and general European influence in the development of navigation management when the
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Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organisation (IMCO) was established in the late 1940s. There are, of course, specific management measures relating to European waters, most notable being the traffic separation schemes. In marine research, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of U N E S C O is based in Paris and the influence of European marine research extends worldwide not only through IOC, but also through ICES and national programmes. In particular, the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and the Global Ocean Flux Study (GOFS) have key European regional inputs.
OBJECTIVES The North Sea case in general, and the Dutch case in particular, focus attention on the overall objectives of sea use management, which must be considered if the field is to develop at all in a European context. 4 The starting point is again the evolution of individual use groups management. Consideration of this reveals c o m m o n objectives, which can be classified into several groups, namely, safety, allocation, environmental control, scientific research and regional development. The safety objective developed largely in the context of navigation, applied to safety of life and property (ships and cargoes), and recently extended to environmental protection. The thrust of this objective is global, rather than regional, even though regional variations in standards exist. Management has thus to be concerned especially with setting and co-ordination of standards, which must be applied at the levels of the ports, states and globally in an international sense, although a supranational interest is also emerging in Europe, through the EC COST 301 project on navigation in European waters, for example. In contrast to navigation, allocation is more obviously regional and local in nature. Concerned primarily with sea space as a means of dividing extractive resources, it is well advanced in Europe, especially with the extension of continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Z o n e limits. The North Sea is almost completely divided by a system of agreed median lines, and other regional seas are at various stages of division. The emphasis in most of the allocation measures to date has been a sharing among states, which will remain for mineral resources. The real challenge in fisheries, however, is regional allocation at sub-national level, especially in the peripheral regions which cover most of the European seas. A good example is the concept of the Shetland box used in the CFP negotiations. 5
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Allocation responsibilities lead to the third major group of objectives, concerned with environmental control, including conservation and pollution control. This group of objectives is also strongly regional in application. Indeed, effective management has to be based essentially upon regional characteristics, such as the major European seas, and smaller scale enclosed waters such as estuaries and the Wadden Seas, and Inner Lead along the Norwegian coast. As with safety objectives, common standards are, however, required; and the early emphasis in management is upon regional co-ordination. It is in the context of both allocation of resources and environmental control that scientific research may be thought of as a primary management objective as well as an activity. It is organised mainly upon use lines, including the 'pure' research of science itself considered as a use. International activity has always been important. ICES itself is the oldest organisation of its kind. Supra-national activities are also being developed by the EC, for example in the MAST and COST 301 programmes concerned, respectively, with marine science and technology, and navigation in European waters. There is a strong need for regional co-ordination, based both on environmental units such as the major seas, and regional development units such as city regions. The regional development objectives are concerned with the specifically human elements of sea use management: employment, income, population and industrial structure. These have been mainly concerned with extractive resources, and have received much prominence in the development of offshore oil and gas in the North Sea. However, this group of objectives is only beginning to be fully appreciated in the case of fisheries management, which has hitherto been primarily concerned with allocation and conservation, rather than adopting a planning approach. In the context of regional development, Europe may be considered as falling into two major regions, the urban industrial core to which only the southern North Sea, southern Baltic, eastern English Channel, Ligurian Sea and northern Adriatic belong; and the vast periphery to which the European seas as a whole belong, and in which regional development policies (both national and supra-national) receive great weight. In these regions, the sea often plays a primary role in the economy, whether it be the fisheries of northern Europe or the coastal recreation of southern Europe. TECHNICAL M A N A G E M E N T Continued rapid advances in marine science and technology are such that emphasis is increasingly falling on technical management, which
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has specific technological, environmental, social and scientific aspects. It is arguably at this level that the main thrust of general management co-ordination needs to be directed. The starting point is at the local scale, in the form of project development which is the focus of man/marine and coastal interactions. Larger scale environmental impacts can be regarded as the sum total of individual developments, even in mobile activities such as fisheries. This is closely associated with technology assessment, where increasing attention has to be paid to the environmental impacts of marine activities. The environmental category includes resource assessment, risk analysis and environmental impact assessment (EIA). These are all directly associated with project development at the local, individual level. A body of general principles and practice continues to be developed in all areas. In the case of the first two, this is of very long standing. EIA, in contrast, is a relatively new concept in which the USA has been the primary focus, and in which the EC and individual European states are only now catching up. Further, EIA tends to be land-oriented, and there is a conceptual task needed to provide an integrated maritime approach applicable to all the sea and coastal use groups. The social group of technical management functions includes sea use planning, the law of the coast and sea, and social impact assessment. The legal aspects are largely national in execution, but general in concepts, with international and supra-national co-ordination required. Sea use planning and social impact assessment are essentially regional and local in character. The only really large scale offshore effort in sea use planning is in the Dutch sector of the North Sea; however, the sum total of port and other coastal activities is probably more significant overall. Social impact assessment is relatively new, and has been chiefly employed in dealing with the development of the North Sea oil industry. However, it is inherent in the fisheries planning approach which will have to be increasingly adopted in fisheries management. There are also applications related to port and shipping development, strategic uses and marine recreation industries. The final technical management area is the scientific, concerned with monitoring of the environment, surveillance of sea uses, and information technology. The first two are well established, having had their origins largely in the European region. A sea use management focus is required in international and supra-national co-ordination. The new area of development is of course in information technology, which can only rest securely upon such co-ordination. It may be that the best management bases are in marine science (especially ICES), fisheries and pollution control, all of which are essentially regional in scope.
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The three aspects of information technology which are of particular interest are, respectively, distributed data-base networks, communication technology and the use of expert systems. It has become possible to create a computerised network of European data bases on marine resources, which would provide links with applications stored elsewhere via requests at any terminal in the system. This can remove data redundancy and produce data integrity with appropriate access authorisation procedures. Such an information management system can operate very efficiently. With the availability of value-added networks (VANS) such as International Network Service (INS), a large number of industries are already using this technology for data communication and information retrieval. The data bases could be used with knowledge-based (expert) systems for understanding key variables and retrieval procedures in the sea use management field.
G E N E R A L M A N A G E M E N T , POLICY AND INTEGRATION There are arguably three major general management considerations which arise. These are, respectively, the lead management organisations securely based in technical management fields; the potential central role of information technology; and the regional bases of sea use management which are likely to favour greater integration. The organisational dimension subsumes the development aspects, organisational levels and management objectives and technical management aspects discussed above. The real work of sea use management lies essentially at the technical management level, where the agency is the key organisation. These agencies may be local, national, supranational or international in function. Central government, together with political, social, economic and environmental factors all have an influence on the agency function. As already noted, agencies are primarily organised along individual use group lines, and may be either development or management oriented. There is a trend towards varying degrees of privatisation of development agencies, which may wax and wane according to the prevailing political climate. The truly management agencies are likely to remain more securely within government ambit. Regardless of this, the key to effective organisational management is arguably in the 'networking' or co-ordination of the work of these agencies. For example, in pollution control this would include water authorities and regional commissions, associated with ports and IMO, together with the operation of the Paris Memorandum international control mechanism and feedback from the North Sea ministerial conferences. This co-
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ordination is more realistic than contemplation of re-organisation of the system. In the sphere of information technology, this networking approach is paralleled as discussed in the previous section. The developments in organisation and information technology are a prerequisite for effective regional management. The most fundamental aspect of this is arguably the relationships between regional development patterns on the one hand and the physical patterns of sea areas on the other. Viewed from this perspective, it is true to say that, first of all, the management of the major marine-related industries is strongly development oriented. In practically no case in Europe do sea use management units reflect the physical pattern of sea areas, which is so much the concern of environmental interests. This is crucial in the case of the Baltic, North, Mediterranean and Black Seas. As already noted, distinction can be made between the European core region with limited sea areas on the one hand and the vast contrasting peripheral seas on the other. Sea use planning approaches, as in the Dutch case, are most advanced in the former, with environmental control objectives ranking higher in the latter, as with fisheries and pollution management. The road to effective regional m a n a g e m e n t is a long one, only begun. The most significant developments relate to the pollution control commissions, C o m m o n Fisheries Policy, and the North Sea; together with the locally organised coastal management systems made up of the ports, land use planning and river basin management. Effective co-ordination of agencies and development of information technology will be the means to allow continued flexible development of the sea use management system in Europe, in ways which perhaps cannot always be clearly foreseen at present.
REFERENCES 1. Mahan, A. T., The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. Boston, 1890, pp. 557. 2. Gorshkov, S. G., The Seapower of the State. Pergamon, Oxford, 1979, pp. 290. 3. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, University of Wales College of Cardiff, North Sea management: utopia or reality ? Report of a technical workshop, 13th November 1989, Rijkswaterstaat, Rijkswijk. 1989, pp. 25. 4. Smith, H. D. & Lalwani, C. S., The North Sea: Sea Use Management and Planning Centre for Marine Law and Policy, UWlST, Cardiff, 1984, pp. 367. 5. Goodlad, J. H., Shetland fisheries----conservation and development. Mar. Policy, 4(1980) 244-5.
The Future Development of Sea Use Management in Europe H. D. Smith & C. S. L a l w a n i Department of Maritime Studies and International Transport, University of Wales College of Cardiff, Cardiff, UK (Paper presented at the IGU Marine Geography Meeting, Wilhelmshaven, May 1989)
ABSTRACT Sea use management originated largely in Europe, initially along the lines of individual use groups. Before the middle of the present century these included navigation, strategic uses, fisheries and marine science. Subsequently the major uses expanded and diversified. The organisations involved and their geographical spheres of influence may be classified into local and national, regional and global categories. Management organisations share basic objectives including safety, allocation, environmental control, research and regional development. Technical management functions are concerned with interactions between activities and the environment and include technological, environmental, social and information management groups. General management includes co-ordination of technical management, organisational aspects and regional considerations including policy aspects.
INTRODUCTION The purpose of this paper is to consider the future of sea use management in Europe, taking due account of past developments and the present state of the field. The discussion thus begins with aspects of the development of sea use management to date, followed by consideration of the organisational hierarchy which has evolved to carry out management functions, and the management objectives which 187 Ocean & Coastal Management 0964-5691/92/$05.00 © 1992 Elsevier Science Publishers Ltd, England. Printed in Northern Ireland
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have, to varying degrees, been shared throughout this evolution. This is followed by a consideration of technical management aspects, which arguably constitute the practical starting point for future, integrated sea use management developments. Finally, general management, policy and integration are considered, where a primary consideration is the regionalisation of sea use management in Europe.
D E V E L O P M E N T ASPECTS Europe is the cradle of sea use management. Most of the early developments took place in European seas, especially those of northern Europe, along the lines of the individual uses. The seventeenth-century conflicts between the English and the Dutch, rooted in overseas expansion and fisheries, may be regarded as marking the commencement of the evolution of the present management of sea uses. Early developments were concentrated in the management of navigation, naval activity, fisheries and marine science. The management of navigation has its roots in the Middle Ages, notably in the provision of pilotage services in relation to key ports and rivers. Other elements in this system are also old, such as the provision of lighthouses, buoys, charts and other navigation aids either nationally or by individual ports; the development of emergency services such as lifeboats; and surveillance by coastguard services. The regulation of shipping is also rooted in Europe, in the origins of the famous classification societies of Britain, Germany and Norway. The development of fisheries regulation is likewise distinctively European, beginning with the traditional national fishing limits dating from the early conflicts in the law of the sea, and progressing to the gear regulations, closed areas and seasons, and quotas of later times. The early conservation failures were European-based, notably the failure of the Great Northern Whale Fishery in the 1880s; and the problems of the Baltic herring and Danish plaice fisheries related to the early history of the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES), conceived in the 1890s and established in 1902. The establishment of ICES was in some ways a consolidation of the marine research developments sparked off by the global voyage of HMS Challenger in the 1870s. While the principal sphere of ICES can be described as European, and later North Atlantic, it too has had a global influence in its field, both directly and indirectly. The pioneering of oceanographic and fisheries research both separately and hand-inhand was accomplished by a small number of European nations in
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which Britain, France, G e r m a n y and the Scandinavian countries loom large. Last among the four early groups of uses is the naval or strategic use of the sea. Until the end of the First World War, naval development in both peace and war was principally focused on Europe, including even the famous actions of John Paul Jones during the American War of Independence. Naval actions not fought in E u r o p e a n waters were mainly fought between or among rival E u r o p e a n nations around the world ocean, with notable beginnings in the Seven Years War of 1756-1763, even if later strategic treaties were American 1 or Soviet. 2 After the Second World War, the general intensification and diversification of economic activity expressed itself in the uses of the sea. The four 'old' use groups underwent this process, and four 'new' use groups emerged in a m a n a g e m e n t context. These latter four included waste disposal, which was to become a major focus of m a n a g e m e n t developments; marine recreation, which diversified beyond the seaside holiday resorts of the late-nineteenth century; the exploitation of mineral resources, in which E u r o p e led the way with sand and gravel; and the North Sea became the global testing ground for deep water offshore engineering in severe environments while dealing with all the inter-use conflicts involved. Finally, the processes of intensification and diversification of uses have given rise to conservation as a specific use in its own right, which may at times have precedence over all other uses in specific coastal and marine areas. Conservation now extends far beyond the idea of conserving commercial fish species, which was a central tenet of fisheries management, to conservation of habitats and whole coastal and marine eco-systems. It is in this latter respect that the emergence of regional m a n a g e m e n t discussed below may gain its greatest impetus.
ORGANISATIONS AND REGIONS The sea use m a n a g e m e n t system which has evolved with the development of individual use groups may be considered in terms of organisations involved in m a n a g e m e n t at several regional scales. The significant developments are arguably first, the local and national developments, where specialised agency functions are characteristic; the regional dimension, which tends to be focused on specific seas and ocean areas and relates primarily to the water column; and the global scale, relating primarily to shipping, navigation and marine science activities, where there is a European c o m p o n e n t and often a large E u r o p e a n influence.
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The local and national scales are intimately related. It is convenient to begin with the national governments whose legislative, administrative and statistical responsibilities are the cornerstone of sea use management. However, much of the technical m a n a g e m e n t is devolved in agency form, for example, in fisheries and regional development. The key agency responsibilities are arguably those which are locally organised and run. First of these agency groups are the port authorities, which are of longest standing and perhaps most obviously maritime. Their functions revolve around the m a n a g e m e n t of navigation and m o v e m e n t of goods and passengers. Because most ports are situated in large towns, or sometimes on green-field sites in the case of bulk handling terminals, and also because in Europe shipping activity is increasingly concentrated in large ports, both the environmental impacts associated with port operations on the one hand, and of the towns on the other, are considerable. Ports have thus come to exercise emergency planning and pollution control responsibilities as well as their more conventional navigational activities. Port authority sea areas are frequently the most intensively used 'urban' sea areas of all, and it is reasonable to assume that, for the largest ports, pressures for multiple use m a n a g e m e n t will tend to grow. The European ports as a group also participate in shipping management standards through the Paris M e m o r a n d u m for Port State Control. This leads naturally to consideration of the land side of multiple use management, a function traditionally exercised by local municipal authorities within a national land use planning framework. The significance of the land use planning system in the present context is twofold: the basic principle of spatial allocation can be applied seawards, and there is pressure to do this on urban coasts, such as the South Coast of England, and on rural coasts intensively managed for recreation and conservation purposes, such as national parks. Secondly, the implications of land use planning on the adjacent seas is of course direct, as for example, in the location of sea outfalls. The role of river basin m a n a g e m e n t organisations is, of course, also of long standing and naturally extends in many cases from responsibility for fresh water quality management to coastal water quality management, fisheries and coastal defences. This function is crucial to coastal and sea use management, as the influence of Europe's large rivers on adjacent seas clearly demonstrates. The Rhine is best known in this respect, but others include the Rhone, Po, Danube, Thames, Elbe, Oder and Vistula. If port and local authorities are to be the principal sea use planners, the water authorities will have a primary role in the management of the water column.
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The second group of organisations is regional, and concerned mainly with fisheries and pollution control, and hence with the water column rather than the sea bed, although the North Sea is something of a special case. For fisheries, the initial approach has been that of the regional commission, for the North East Atlantic, Mediterranean, Black Sea and Baltic. Their role which was arguably not very effective, has become residual for two reasons, namely, the extension of coastal state jurisdiction, and the development of the Common Fisheries Policy of the European Community, especially since the 1973 accession of the UK, Ireland and Denmark, and subsequent expansion of the Community to include the leading fishing nations of Spain and Portugal. The most effective management on the seaward side to date has probably been that of Iceland, and a combination of coastal state management and CFP seems to be the future: the latter in the core regional seas and the former in the periphery where special regional arrangements are necessary to safeguard fishing communities. The role of ICES as a scientific adviser to the management bodies remains important. In the case of pollution control, most developments are post-1970, and again regionally based on the same sea regions. The basic approach is that of the commission, and the future seems to be a combination of these, EC directives and the role of the water authorities based on national legislation, presumably increasingly attuned to the European dimension. The comparison with the fisheries is important, because it will be instructive in the delineation of effective mixes of national, international and supranational approaches. The North Sea is something of a special case in that, although the primary focus is upon pollution control, regional management appears to be evolving differently, in two ways. First, there is already a multiple use management awareness underlying the pollution theme to some extent. Secondly, progress is currently occurring via a series of Ministerial Conferences rather than through a international convention. Further, the Dutch have taken the initiative in building a more comprehensive management and planning approach to their sector, 3 which will undoubtedly have to be extended both in principle and practice if integrated management is to become a reality. The third management area is the global, international one. Here the principal developments relate to shipping and navigation, and marine science. The International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and International Maritime Satellite Organisation (INMARSAT) have, of course, well recognised roles in shipping and navigation, mirroring the ports to some extent in pollution control. These are appropriately based in London, perhaps evidence of the British and general European influence in the development of navigation management when the
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Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative Organisation (IMCO) was established in the late 1940s. There are, of course, specific management measures relating to European waters, most notable being the traffic separation schemes. In marine research, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission (IOC) of U N E S C O is based in Paris and the influence of European marine research extends worldwide not only through IOC, but also through ICES and national programmes. In particular, the World Ocean Circulation Experiment (WOCE) and the Global Ocean Flux Study (GOFS) have key European regional inputs.
OBJECTIVES The North Sea case in general, and the Dutch case in particular, focus attention on the overall objectives of sea use management, which must be considered if the field is to develop at all in a European context. 4 The starting point is again the evolution of individual use groups management. Consideration of this reveals c o m m o n objectives, which can be classified into several groups, namely, safety, allocation, environmental control, scientific research and regional development. The safety objective developed largely in the context of navigation, applied to safety of life and property (ships and cargoes), and recently extended to environmental protection. The thrust of this objective is global, rather than regional, even though regional variations in standards exist. Management has thus to be concerned especially with setting and co-ordination of standards, which must be applied at the levels of the ports, states and globally in an international sense, although a supranational interest is also emerging in Europe, through the EC COST 301 project on navigation in European waters, for example. In contrast to navigation, allocation is more obviously regional and local in nature. Concerned primarily with sea space as a means of dividing extractive resources, it is well advanced in Europe, especially with the extension of continental shelf and Exclusive Economic Z o n e limits. The North Sea is almost completely divided by a system of agreed median lines, and other regional seas are at various stages of division. The emphasis in most of the allocation measures to date has been a sharing among states, which will remain for mineral resources. The real challenge in fisheries, however, is regional allocation at sub-national level, especially in the peripheral regions which cover most of the European seas. A good example is the concept of the Shetland box used in the CFP negotiations. 5
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Allocation responsibilities lead to the third major group of objectives, concerned with environmental control, including conservation and pollution control. This group of objectives is also strongly regional in application. Indeed, effective management has to be based essentially upon regional characteristics, such as the major European seas, and smaller scale enclosed waters such as estuaries and the Wadden Seas, and Inner Lead along the Norwegian coast. As with safety objectives, common standards are, however, required; and the early emphasis in management is upon regional co-ordination. It is in the context of both allocation of resources and environmental control that scientific research may be thought of as a primary management objective as well as an activity. It is organised mainly upon use lines, including the 'pure' research of science itself considered as a use. International activity has always been important. ICES itself is the oldest organisation of its kind. Supra-national activities are also being developed by the EC, for example in the MAST and COST 301 programmes concerned, respectively, with marine science and technology, and navigation in European waters. There is a strong need for regional co-ordination, based both on environmental units such as the major seas, and regional development units such as city regions. The regional development objectives are concerned with the specifically human elements of sea use management: employment, income, population and industrial structure. These have been mainly concerned with extractive resources, and have received much prominence in the development of offshore oil and gas in the North Sea. However, this group of objectives is only beginning to be fully appreciated in the case of fisheries management, which has hitherto been primarily concerned with allocation and conservation, rather than adopting a planning approach. In the context of regional development, Europe may be considered as falling into two major regions, the urban industrial core to which only the southern North Sea, southern Baltic, eastern English Channel, Ligurian Sea and northern Adriatic belong; and the vast periphery to which the European seas as a whole belong, and in which regional development policies (both national and supra-national) receive great weight. In these regions, the sea often plays a primary role in the economy, whether it be the fisheries of northern Europe or the coastal recreation of southern Europe. TECHNICAL M A N A G E M E N T Continued rapid advances in marine science and technology are such that emphasis is increasingly falling on technical management, which
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has specific technological, environmental, social and scientific aspects. It is arguably at this level that the main thrust of general management co-ordination needs to be directed. The starting point is at the local scale, in the form of project development which is the focus of man/marine and coastal interactions. Larger scale environmental impacts can be regarded as the sum total of individual developments, even in mobile activities such as fisheries. This is closely associated with technology assessment, where increasing attention has to be paid to the environmental impacts of marine activities. The environmental category includes resource assessment, risk analysis and environmental impact assessment (EIA). These are all directly associated with project development at the local, individual level. A body of general principles and practice continues to be developed in all areas. In the case of the first two, this is of very long standing. EIA, in contrast, is a relatively new concept in which the USA has been the primary focus, and in which the EC and individual European states are only now catching up. Further, EIA tends to be land-oriented, and there is a conceptual task needed to provide an integrated maritime approach applicable to all the sea and coastal use groups. The social group of technical management functions includes sea use planning, the law of the coast and sea, and social impact assessment. The legal aspects are largely national in execution, but general in concepts, with international and supra-national co-ordination required. Sea use planning and social impact assessment are essentially regional and local in character. The only really large scale offshore effort in sea use planning is in the Dutch sector of the North Sea; however, the sum total of port and other coastal activities is probably more significant overall. Social impact assessment is relatively new, and has been chiefly employed in dealing with the development of the North Sea oil industry. However, it is inherent in the fisheries planning approach which will have to be increasingly adopted in fisheries management. There are also applications related to port and shipping development, strategic uses and marine recreation industries. The final technical management area is the scientific, concerned with monitoring of the environment, surveillance of sea uses, and information technology. The first two are well established, having had their origins largely in the European region. A sea use management focus is required in international and supra-national co-ordination. The new area of development is of course in information technology, which can only rest securely upon such co-ordination. It may be that the best management bases are in marine science (especially ICES), fisheries and pollution control, all of which are essentially regional in scope.
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The three aspects of information technology which are of particular interest are, respectively, distributed data-base networks, communication technology and the use of expert systems. It has become possible to create a computerised network of European data bases on marine resources, which would provide links with applications stored elsewhere via requests at any terminal in the system. This can remove data redundancy and produce data integrity with appropriate access authorisation procedures. Such an information management system can operate very efficiently. With the availability of value-added networks (VANS) such as International Network Service (INS), a large number of industries are already using this technology for data communication and information retrieval. The data bases could be used with knowledge-based (expert) systems for understanding key variables and retrieval procedures in the sea use management field.
G E N E R A L M A N A G E M E N T , POLICY AND INTEGRATION There are arguably three major general management considerations which arise. These are, respectively, the lead management organisations securely based in technical management fields; the potential central role of information technology; and the regional bases of sea use management which are likely to favour greater integration. The organisational dimension subsumes the development aspects, organisational levels and management objectives and technical management aspects discussed above. The real work of sea use management lies essentially at the technical management level, where the agency is the key organisation. These agencies may be local, national, supranational or international in function. Central government, together with political, social, economic and environmental factors all have an influence on the agency function. As already noted, agencies are primarily organised along individual use group lines, and may be either development or management oriented. There is a trend towards varying degrees of privatisation of development agencies, which may wax and wane according to the prevailing political climate. The truly management agencies are likely to remain more securely within government ambit. Regardless of this, the key to effective organisational management is arguably in the 'networking' or co-ordination of the work of these agencies. For example, in pollution control this would include water authorities and regional commissions, associated with ports and IMO, together with the operation of the Paris Memorandum international control mechanism and feedback from the North Sea ministerial conferences. This co-
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ordination is more realistic than contemplation of re-organisation of the system. In the sphere of information technology, this networking approach is paralleled as discussed in the previous section. The developments in organisation and information technology are a prerequisite for effective regional management. The most fundamental aspect of this is arguably the relationships between regional development patterns on the one hand and the physical patterns of sea areas on the other. Viewed from this perspective, it is true to say that, first of all, the management of the major marine-related industries is strongly development oriented. In practically no case in Europe do sea use management units reflect the physical pattern of sea areas, which is so much the concern of environmental interests. This is crucial in the case of the Baltic, North, Mediterranean and Black Seas. As already noted, distinction can be made between the European core region with limited sea areas on the one hand and the vast contrasting peripheral seas on the other. Sea use planning approaches, as in the Dutch case, are most advanced in the former, with environmental control objectives ranking higher in the latter, as with fisheries and pollution management. The road to effective regional m a n a g e m e n t is a long one, only begun. The most significant developments relate to the pollution control commissions, C o m m o n Fisheries Policy, and the North Sea; together with the locally organised coastal management systems made up of the ports, land use planning and river basin management. Effective co-ordination of agencies and development of information technology will be the means to allow continued flexible development of the sea use management system in Europe, in ways which perhaps cannot always be clearly foreseen at present.
REFERENCES 1. Mahan, A. T., The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660-1783. Boston, 1890, pp. 557. 2. Gorshkov, S. G., The Seapower of the State. Pergamon, Oxford, 1979, pp. 290. 3. The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, University of Wales College of Cardiff, North Sea management: utopia or reality ? Report of a technical workshop, 13th November 1989, Rijkswaterstaat, Rijkswijk. 1989, pp. 25. 4. Smith, H. D. & Lalwani, C. S., The North Sea: Sea Use Management and Planning Centre for Marine Law and Policy, UWlST, Cardiff, 1984, pp. 367. 5. Goodlad, J. H., Shetland fisheries----conservation and development. Mar. Policy, 4(1980) 244-5.