An Evaluation of Coastal Zone Management Practices in The Eastern African Region

The countries of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) region share a common but varying dependence on the coastal resources including fisheries resources. Currently the coastal zone of the mainland states is home to over 30 million people and about 7.7 million more live on the Islands of Seychelles, Mauritius, Madagascar, Comoros and Réunion (Linden and Lundin, 1997). Coastal resources in the Eastern African region have supported the livelihoods of generations of coastal dwellers and have contributed to the economic development of most countries in the region. However, these resources have increasingly come under a combined pressure of over exploitation as a result of increasing demand, resource degradation and inadequate management. Other coastal management issues in the region also include user conflicts, especially between traditional uses such as fisheries and new and emerging uses such as tourism in some of the countries.

The overall effect is the reduction of coastal productivity and services thus undermining economic and socioeconomic development of the countries in the region. Recognising the inadequacy of sectoral management in addressing the multiplicity of issues in the coastal zone and to reverse the above-mentioned trend, countries in the region are committed to and have embarked on an integrated approach to the management of their coastal areas. The Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) approach has been deemed as an effective means to address the multiplicity of issues found in the coastal zone and its resources. This decision has received wide regional and international support. Of the ten countries in the WIO region only Tanzania and South Africa have adopted national ICM programmes.

However, while South Africa adopted a national ICM policy in 2001, Tanzania adopted a national ICM strategy in 2002. Tanzania did endeavour to have a national ICM policy but her attempts to do so did not succeed mainly due to insufficient publicity of the issue and little political support for the measure. Some of the other countries in the region such as Madagascar are in the process of developing their national frameworks for coastal management while others still rely on field-based programmes and region-wide projects. In the case of Madagascar the development of a national ICM programme is affected within the framework of the country’s National Environmental Action Plan. At present however, ICM efforts in Madagascar are in the form of field programmes such as the Sustainable Coastal Zone Development Pilot Project for Menabe.