“Environment, Ecology & Natural Resource Determinants as Sustainability Indicators in Integrated
Coastal Zone Management Systems across Peninsular India”…..
Human activity impacts dynamics of coastal zones and redistributes its sustainbility indicators on time scale in terms of significant variables and determinants such as environment, ecology economics and natural resource. Natural and human induced anthropogenic changes are the major variables that govern coastal dynamics and have a profound effect on the long term and large scale evolution of the coastal zones. These determinants define socio – economic indices in Integrated Coastal Zone Management Systems as well. We need to understand the processes of carbon and nutrient cycling and the global significance of the coastal seas in the model of energy, environment and carbon cycle at large. We further need to be able to predict the evolution of the coastal ecosystems for different global change scenarios and the effects of these changing coastal systems on social and economic activities that can improvise strategies for the sustainable management of coastal resources.
The paper emphatically addresses the components relevant in sustainable integrated coastal zone management. The coastal regions across peninsular India are under constant economic pressure in terms of environment, biodiversity, climate, ecology and natural resource availability. Further, increasing demand for coastal resources is leading to their degradation — reduced water quality and quantity, accelerated erosion, accumulation of pollution, loss of fisheries resources, etc. Moreover, this degradation has negative social and economic consequences. The increasing attention within sustainable coastal management on sensitivity analyses of climate change impacts and socio-economic activities in the coastal zone, implies an increasing demand of probabilistic scenarios of coastal evolution spanning a time interval of ~100 years.
The paper orients that the Web Based Environment, Ecology and Natural Resource Management Systems at Project Design Documents of integrated coastal zone management systems in specific context of coastal zone regulations, are now being viewed as one of the most effective crisis management tool to preserve coastal zone ecology and bio-diversity within the framework of CZR, worldwide. An economic solution involving web based data networking and communication places huge priority in creating an assessment and evaluation model for coastal ecology and natural environment management as the sustainability indicators. Coastal society needs tremendous ease and accessibility in transmitting, compiling, and analyzing data for preventative disaster management, safety program and sustainable environment management for enhanced economic productivity in an heighten Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) model. Coastal zone project design integrates data based software architecture needed to build a webbased system for securing flow of data from coastal operation optimization to predictive monitoring and security evaluation, while generating safety alerts and CSR reports in real time. It further formulates Project Design Document in the Framework of emerging environmental regulations, QHSE Systems, emissions’ reduction and Clean Development Mechanisms for sustainable energy and environment management across peninsular India at large.
The paper concludes that the sustainability and applicability of ICZM is based on local solutions to local problems. Local stakeholders will always be at the centre of moves to improve the lot of coastal regions, but in order to ensure the best possible deal for coastal zones, there is a need to coordinate the activities of these grass-roots actors with regional, and national policy-makers. ICZM will have short-term costs, but much greater medium and long term benefits. For centuries, India’s coastal zones have suffered from poorly coordinated planning and inappropriate policymaking.