Analytical perspectives of cooperative coastal management

We accept the thesis that coastal management, as any other form of environmental management, can be effective only with the cooperation of a multitude of stakeholders with conflicting interests. At present, cooperation is forced upon stakeholders by a paternalistic (top-down) coastal management that is outcome oriented and coercive in nature. Forced cooperation is difficult to maintain, however. The alternative is to seek voluntary cooperation with a process-oriented, cooperative (bottom-up) coastal management approach. After a brief review of these arguments, we address the major analytical challenge of cooperative coastal management, which is to search for solutions that can be negotiated and implemented with maximum voluntary cooperation. The main property of these solutions, which are also referred to as core solutions, is that they are preferable to individual stakeholders or coalitions of stakeholders over acting-alone alternatives. Our analysis is applicable to any other form of environmental management.