1 Coastal zone resource management: tools for a participatory planning and decision making process

Coastal zones around the globe experience rapid development and change, and the Mediterranean, and in particular the Southern and Eastern parts, is undergoing dramatic demographic and related socio-economic development with growing and conflicting demands on natural resources. This leads to often irreversible degradation of these resources including the littoral and sub-littoral zones and thus the very basis for development. Two ongoing projects sponsored by the European Commission under the INCO framework address these issues with a combination of information technology, environmental sciences and engineering, and socio-economic analysis. The projects develop and explore methods and tools for long-term policy analysis and strategic decision support for integrated and sustainable coastal development with special emphasis on land use and water resources including coastal wate