EU demo on ICZM: The Development of a Consensus Based Integrated Coastal Zone Management Strategy for Bantry Bay

Bantry Bay is an area of outstanding scenic landsapes, housing Ireland's state oil transshipment terminal, one of our largest fishing ports, the country's highest density of aquaculture units and one of our busiest tourist areas. This has produced, in a small community, multi-user conflicts and dissension, as management and use of the coastal zone is not currently coordinated to conduce sustainable development.

This project aims to establish an innovative process of concertation by all stakeholders, to produce a sustainable management strategy, with community ownership and regulatory authority involvement, for Banty Bay's coastal resources.

Using a stakeholders' collective, the project will identify the issues according to the local community. The project will integrate existing datsets into a community driven GIS to provide indicators of environmental quality and sensitivity, to aid in decision making. Critical resources, which must be preserved for ecosystem stability, and non-critical resources which may be sustainably developed for socio-economic benefit to the community, will be identified.

Results anticipated:

• Establishment of informal contracting between the stakeholders to secure agreed strategies that respect the concept of rational systainable development and integrate multi-use of the Bay.
• Integration of community knowledge and existing datasets using GIS to provide indicators of environemntal quality with community based resource mapping, thus aiding the decision making process. Stategic EIA and EQA will be used to establish best practice techniques.
• Dissemination throughout Europe of the strategy for conflict resolution in coastal zones.