Lecture 24 Coastal Sustainability Management Using GIS
Learning Objectives
24.1 Why is coastal zone management at the local jurisdiction level an important concern for many areas around the world? How should we interpret “local”?
24.2 What is the foundation of an ecological city approach to development?
24.3 What is the significance of the link among planning, programming, and projects?
24.4 What is the purpose of indicators for coastal community development?
24.1 Why is coastal zone management at the local jurisdiction level an important concern for many areas around the world? How should we interpret “local”?
As mentioned earlier, coastal watersheds comprise about 17 percent of the U.S. contiguous land area (10% of land in coastal counties), but contain 52% of the population (39% in coastal counties); and the trend of population increase is expected to continue (NOAA’s Coastal Population News, March 2013).
Villages, Town(ship)s, Cities, and Counties can be considered “local” when it comes to coastal zone management. Much of the management is about making decisions regarding planning, budgeting for improvement programs and implementing improvements in those jurisdictions through projects distributed in space and time.
Many decisions that influence coastal resources are made at a local level. Furthermore, local decisions often have diverse stakeholder groups who have interest in, and often participate in, such decisions. As of 2007, the US Bureau of Census reports 89,000+ governance districts, with 3,033 counties and 19,492 municipalities, plus 60,000+ other governance jurisdictions. http://www.census.gov/govs/cog/GovOrgTab03ss.html
Regulation of land use development decisions is the primary responsibility of local jurisdictions, but public, private and not-for-profit entities all make decisions. Beatley, Brower and Schwab (2002) argue that land use and comprehensive planning can be most responsive to the interests, needs, issues, and concerns of the constituencies at the local level. Furthermore, they suggest that coastal communities can become sustainable coastal communities.
That “sustainability” perspective follows from the 1987 report of the Brundtland Commission (and many subsequent initiatives) that popularized the concept of sustainable development, defining it as …
“development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”
(World Commission on Environment and Development 1987, p.8)
Sustainable coastal communities as counties, cities, towns, and villages (and the regional governance bodies helping to coordinate activities)…
· seek to minimize their destructive impact on natural systems and the natural environment,
· create highly livable and enduring places
· build communities that are socially just and in which the needs of all groups in the community are addressed
Beatley, Brower, Schwab (2002, p. 198) offer characteristics of a sustainable coastal community (and we can consider how GIS can be used)
· Minimize disruption of natural systems and avoid consumption and destruction of ecologically sensitive lands (e.g., coastal wetlands, maritime forests, species habitat, and areas rich in biodiversity),
· Minimize their ecological footprints and reduce the wasteful consumption of land; promote compact, contiguous development patterns and encourage separation of urban and urbanizable lands from natural and rural lands,
· Avoid environmental hazards and reduce exposure of people and property to coastal hazards by keeping people and property out of coastal floodplains, high-erosion zones, and inlet hazards areas,
· Reduce waste generation (e.g., air pollution, water pollution) and the consumption of nonrenewable resources and promote the recycling and reuse of waste products, respecting ecological capital to supply ecological services; understand and live within the natural ecological carrying capacity of the area,
· Reduce dependency on the automobile and promote a more balanced and integrated transportation system; encourage and facilitate the use of a variety of alternative and more sustainable modes of transportation (e.g., mass transit, bicycles, walking) and integrate land use and transportation decision making,
· Promote and develop a sense of place and understanding and appreciation of the bioregional context in which they are situated,
· Foster a high degree of livability; aesthetically pleasing and visually stimulating community whose design uplifts human spirit,
· Incorporate a strong public and civic dimension, that is reflected in the communities spatial and physical form; promoting places of public interaction that help shape a sense of identity,
· Achieve a human scale and encourage integration of uses and activities (e.g., commercial and residential) and enhance livability in various ways (e.g., reduce crime, reduce auto dependent, develop vibrant spaces),
· Seek to eradicate poverty and ensure a dignified life for all residents; provide affordable housing, health care, meaningful employment, and reduce separation between income groups,
· Value participation of all citizens (residents) and provide opportunities for participation in governance.
The relationship between those key concepts of sustainable communities and several key functions of governance in which local governments are involved is central to implementing coastal zone management as an approach to sustainability management of social-ecological-economic systems services. Characterizing and improving services requires a spatial-temporal systems approach, and GIS can support this.
24.2 What is the foundation of an ecological city approach to development?
More and more cities are recognizing the need for ecological approaches to development – so-called ecological city approach (White, R. 2002. Building the Ecological City, Boca Raton, CRC Press.) An ecological city approach to development requires
- active consideration of the relationships among land, energy, transportation, and environmental health as a
- foundation for systems process modeling.
Natural-human system – a collection of inter-related natural and human elements that influence one another in daily life. A natural-human system can be characterized as a systems process model. Need for system process models stems from guiding principles about sustainability, e.g., those of the Santa Monica Sustainable City Program (Beatley, Brower, Schwab p. 234-235).
- The concept of sustainability guides city policy, hence all activities associated with city work.
- Protection, preservation and restoration of natural environment is a high priority
- Environmental quality and economic health are mutually dependent
- All decisions have environmental implications
- Community awareness, responsibility, involvement and education are key elements of successful programs/policies
- Recognize the linkages with regional, state, national, and global community
- Environmental issues most important to the community should be addressed first, and the most cost-effective programs and policies should be selected
- Commitment to procurement decisions that minimize negative environmental and social impacts
Those guidelines lead to green governance of (city, business, and citizens) activity. Green governance follows from a trend toward the greening of business. Many industry sectors have picked up on this idea because it is actually profitable to reduce waste streams – given the cost of dealing with forms of waste.
Green governance is implemented wherein nature’s functions and diversity are systematically NOT (Beatley, Brower, Schwab p. 236):
- subject to increasing concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust;
- subject to increasing concentrations of substances produced by society;
- impoverished by physical displacement, overharvesting or other forms of ecosystem manipulation; and resources are used fairly and efficiently in order to meet basic human needs globally.
Those steps point up a need to understand flow and process using GIS. At the current time, GIS can implement dynamic process models in terms of characterizing the increments of processes, i.e. investigating the flows about what is connected to what based on two or more time periods as wastes and products move from place to place. That perspective about using GIS to characterize flows links well with principles of ecological coastal development (Beatley, Brower, and Schwab 2002, p. 281). Consider the use of GIS for the following.
- Minimize the amount of water, energy, and other resources needed to build and operate buildings; incorporate renewable energy, including solar energy, into the design and siting of buildings.
- Use local building materials obtained from sustainably managed sources (e.g., sustainably harvested forests).
- Minimize waste during construction; use recycled building materials.
- Build compactly and conserve as much coastal land as possible in clusters away from wetlands, beaches, and other sensitive lands.
- Locate new development projects in close proximity to public transit and town centers and in areas where residents and workers can walk and ride bicycles, thereby reducing the need for automobiles.
- Choose in-town locations over rural or exurban sites; look for opportunities to strengthen and revitalize existing coastal towns and cities.
- Minimize the embodied energy of structures (i.e., the energy necessary to procure the materials for the building).
- Look for infill sites and opportunities to reuse built environment before developing in greenfield locations.
- Design and build to last; durability and quality should be favored over short-term profits (what about building to be recycled?).
- View every building project as an opportunity to restore and repair damage coastal ecosystems.
- Protect trees, vegetation, and existing elements of the natural landscape; build within nature’s ecological envelope.
- Reduce impervious surfaces and maintain the natural hydrology of the landscape.
- Avoid hazardous coastal locations, such as inlet zones, floodplains, and high erosion zones.
- Strive to make projects affordable and create economically and ethically diverse neighborhoods and communities.
- Design projects through an inclusive, participatory process; affected parties should be consulted and have the opportunity to influence designs.
- Incorporate features that educate future residents about ecological sustainability; make visible the natural processes on which we all rely.
- Search for designs that harmoniously blend projects into the natural and cultural landscape; design and build to strengthen sense of place.
- Incorporate design elements that strengthen connections for others and the broader community (connecting streets, trails and common spaces); discourage developments that separate and isolate from the broader community.
24.3 What is the significance of the link among planning, programming, and projects?
The above sustainability principles set out fundamentals for policy development about projects. The sustainable coastal community characteristics and the above ecological guidelines together provide a basis for sustainable development policies. Development policies underpin how communities will change/transform themselves over time.
In community governance, policy is implemented through three decision support situations – plans, improvement programs, and project implementations - for which GIS can be put to use. Heathcote (1998 p. 391), in a book titled Integrated Watershed Management describes a relationship between plans, programs and project implementation in the following way.
a) plans articulate a long-term perspective, and thus guide improvement programs
b) improvement programs are developed to match projects to social, economic, and environmental conditions in the world (i.e., what is needed, what can be done about community impairments – what needs fixing - over the medium term), and
c) projects are proposed fixes to conditions of impairments.
Linking the planning, improvement programming, and project implementation decision processes over time provides feedback about whether and how a community is moving in sustainable directions. The linkage forms a sustainability management lifecycle as described by Nyerges and Jankowski, 2010, Regional and Urban GIS: A Decision Support Approach. GIS, because of its inherent integrative capacities, can be used as a decision support technology to foster sustainability management. Note: Beatley et al. 2002 refer to ‘project’ development in light of ecological principles above.
Local Example: Salmon habitat recovery activity as Plans, Programs, and Projects.
- Plan - Green/Duwamish Watershed Salmon Habitat Plan 2006-2015; 2016-2017.
- Program – Green/Duwamish Three-Year Work Program
- Projects – Green/Duwamish Ecosystem Restoration Projects
24.4 What is the purpose of indicators for coastal community development?
Indicators help monitor conditions (progress) with regard to plans, improvement programs, and project implementation for coastal social-economic-ecological systems. Monitoring how projects individually, but more importantly together, have impacted well-being is important to adaptation of complex social-economic-ecological systems, and a key in coastal sustainability management. Beatley, Brower, and Schwab 2002 suggest a set of indicators (see below) to be monitored over time. The indicators mentioned below address the broad issue of socio-ecological well-being. Many are similar to Puget Sound Partnership (PSP) Vital signs. Many of the PSP Vital Sign indicators can be mapped. More importantly, indicators are often related to other indicators. A critique of the PSP indicator approach emphasizes the need for a conceptual model(s) that explicitly relates indicators to other indicators. Using such models enabled within a geodesign framework GIS can be used to develop change models to formulate recommended solutions to complex social-ecological problems.
Indicators for monitoring coastal community development (Beatley et al. 2002, p. 289)
Land Development
- % of coastline urbanized
- Acres of greenfield land developed per year
- Acres and % of brownfield development for infill per year
- Acres of farmland or rural land lost each year
Water
- Extent of fishable and swimmable waters; changes in water quality
- % changes over time of extent of pervious and impervious surfaces
Hazard Exposure
- Number of structures in 60-year erosion zone
- Number of unelevated structures in the floodplain
- Number of structures built to older building codes
- Number of population shelters for hazards, e.g., hurricane and tsunami
Air - Number of days in violation of Clean Air Act
Wetlands
- Acres of existing and protected wetlands
- Acres of coastal wetlands converted each year
Forest and Habitat
- Acres changed in forest coverage
- Acreage in forest
- Extent and status of endangered species
- Extent and status of biodiversity hotspots
Fisheries and Marine Resources
- Health of coral reefs, sea grasses, and other marine habitats
- Status and condition of local and regional fisheries
- Number, severity, and coverage of oil spills
Equity and Affordability
- Housing affordability measure; median price to median income
- Unemployment rates
Recreational and Coastal Access
- Number of beach access points
- Acres of public beach
Energy and Resource Use
- Water consumption per capita
- Energy consumption per capita
- Solid waste generated per year, and recycling rate
- Number of treatment plants with tertiary and advanced treatment
Transportation and Mobility
- Modal share for walking, bicycle, and transit
- Percentage of built environment that is bicycle and/or pedestrian friendly