Abstract: | Water Sports and their Relevance for ICZM Processes Water sports are one of the three important sectors of the maritime tourism and cover not only classical activities like sailing, scuba diving, angling and wind surfing and their winter variants, but also new forms like kite-surfing. Due to the manifold interactions with the nature, but also concerning to the currently increasing importance for the tourism and the broad variety of service suppliers and stakeholders water sports are predestined for ICZM activities. The impact of sportsmen into the aquatic nature shows manifold patterns. The individual traffic caused by sportsmen is one general problem; but there is hardly a chance of reduction because of the distances between the urban agglomerations with most of the customers and the water-touristic destinations and the bad attainability with public transport. Several kinds of water sports include typical impact patterns: Sailing boats influence the ecosystem by fast movement and its disturbance potential, poisonous compounds in yacht paints and sometimes the use of flat shorelines for overnight stays. The most important problem of motor boats is the emission of exhaust gases respectively other remainders and noise with hardly chances being reduced effectively by electric engines. Hobby fishermen disturb the ecosystem by taking selected fish species; the impact potential of scuba divers is concentrated on damaging plants by entering the water, swirling of sediments and disturbance of the water column by ascending air bubbles. Canoeing is free of emissions but it also contains the danger of uncontrolled overnight stays along the rivers and cruises in shallow water areas. Voluntary restrictions could one of the keys for an effective reduction of the human impact. Environmental education and active measures concerning environmental protection are important topics of the policy of the German water sport associations. Several activities are focused on the protection of selected ecosystems and species (reefs, sharks); other measures include the financial support for research on non-poisonous boat coatings or for ecological infrastructure of marinas. All associations offer a lot of information material; some of them include environmental topics into their obligatory or voluntary education programs. Nearly all of the associations have own experiences with public participation and active ICZMlike measures; but only some of them see the benefits of Integrated Coastal Zone Management currently. It shows the importance to increase the degree of publicity of ICZM, but also the chance of a successful integration of the water sports into ICZM activities. |
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PDF: | Artikel7_Steingrube_Scheibe.pdf (248.863 Bytes) | |
Coastal databases provided and maintained by EUCC - The Coastal Union Germany |