| Keywords | fysisk planering, deltagande, hållbar resursbruk, naturressurskonflikter, konflikthantering naturresurs- planeringskonflikter, integrerad kustzonsförvaltning, kustresurser, vattenkvalité, vindkraft, permanent boende, turistanläggningar, miljökonsekvenser, skärgårdsutveckling, landsbygdsutveckling, |
| A. Theme of the Doctoral Thesis:
Natural Resource Management in Coastal Areas:
Planning and Participation along the Bohuslän Coast
B. Main Question and Related Questions
What are the possibilities and shortcomings of public participation in
coastal planning?
a) How and why do different coastal actors participate in coastal planning?
b) What are the results and effects of participation-processes?
c) How can experience and available knowledge about participation-processes
be used in coastal management?
C. Background
This Ph.D.-thesis is part of a MISTRA-financed research-programme on
sustainable management of coastal resources (SUCOZOMA). The programme is an
interdisciplinary collaboration of Swedish researchers in natural and
social sciences both on the East and West coast. The program's aim is "to
promote a management of marine coastal ecosystems based on their real and
sustainable contribution to society".
The thesis-work is nested within a human ecological project-group (proj.
1.1) dealing with competing interests and conditions for conflict
resolution. The project-group aims at developping interdiscipli nary tools
for analyzing social, economical and ecological conflicts related to the
use of coastal resources. There is a need to understand what lies behind
such conflicts, who is involved in them and how society deals with them.
This happens by identifying different coastal actors and by analyzing how
they (e.g. fishermen, tourists, industry, administration) see a problem and
what kinds of mechanisms and institutions are involved to regulate the use
of coastal resources. Final aim is to find management tools helping to
tackle today's problems in coastal areas, such as massive over-use,
complexity, lengthy administrational procedures, low cooperation,
diffuseness of damage, difficulty of polluter-tracing.
Coordination across administrative levels and sectors combined with
enhanced user-participation are often proposed as remedies to present
environmental problems - also in coastal management contexts. Some decades
ago centralization, sectoralization, and specialization were favoured to
make society more efficient. Power was centralized, decision-making
sectoralized and based on expert-knowledge, also regarding the use of
natural resources. These strategies seem to have come to a limit. Today a
counter-current calls for more decision-making power on local level,
cross-sectoral thinking and a more permanent dialogue with the
resource-users, including local laymen and their knowledge.
Physical planning is a cross-sectoral administrative tool dealing with
environmental and resource- management issues and well established in
Sweden. Decision-making power is mainly on municipal level, with exceptions
regarding national interests. During the last decade method-studies for
planning water-covered areas have been conducted leading to a new
generation of municipal comprehensive plans which include shore and water
until the territorial limit. Some participation-procedures are attached to
physical planning by law. Recently some special attempts were made with a
higher intensity of participation on local level.
Using the experiences from some of these cases this study wants to explore
how far such general suggestions regarding coordination and especially
participation in environmental management are in practice useful and how so.
D. Approach
Comparative case studies including situation-analysis in 2-3 West coast
municipalities (methods: interviews, document analysis, group discussions,
sources: experts and laymen, planning documents, legislation, reports,
newspapters etc.). Discussion of empirical results using an integrative and
interdisciplinary theoretical framework. |