Educating for the Governance of Coastal Ecosystems

There is a fundamental shift in how the problems confronting a practicing coastal manager are being defined. Coastal management began as a form of “environmental protection” and has evolved into a promising vehicle for progressing towards more sustainable forms of development. The world view upon which ICM is founded is different from the one that prompted initial coastal management efforts three decades ago. In ICM, there is a realization that there are limitations to the capacity of this planet’s living systems and therefore to the quantity and the quality of human activity that it can sustain. Herman Daly has suggested that the defining feature of sustainable development is the replacement of quantitative expansion (growth) with qualitative improvement (development) as the path of future progress. A focus on the qualities of the human experience, the qualities of anthropogenically transformed ecosystems and the qualities of the processes of governance could translate into an innovative approach to educating a professional for a career in this