Coastal & Marine Union (EUCC)

EUCC has been organizing bi-annual conferences since 1987 implementing its network's mission namely “bringing together the scientific community, coastal practitioners and policy makers”. Until 1999, the conference was organized uniquely by EUCC under the name “Coastlines”, and later on it joined forces with Eurocoast, an association mainly concerned by the technical aspects of coastal processes, thus giving birth to the “Littoral” conferences in 2002.

EUCC also supports other conferences organized by national branches, like the International Conference on Coastal Conservation and Management (ICCCM), organized by EUCC Portugal.

Thanks to the efforts of Dr. Frank van der Meulen and Dr. David Green, an official scientific organ of the EUCC was created in 1994. Published by Springer, the Journal of Coastal Conservation became a scientific journal for the dissemination of both theoretical and applied research on integrated and sustainable management of the terrestrial, coastal and marine environmental interface.

Furthermore, EUCC publishes the quarterly magazine “Coastal & Marine”, aimed at those professionally involved in coastal management, planning and conservation in Europe as well as a number of newsletters of different geographical coverage and news blogs.

EUCC mission includes providing knowledge and capacity and foster public outreach. Both the International Secretariat and the offices and branches place efforts to this end.

EUCC France workshop in Sète

Inspired by Prof. Roland Paskoff, EUCC-France started to organise a series of expert field workshops throughout the French territory, two each year, promoting dialogue between scientists and coastal managers. After 15 years of workshops, the book Les ateliers d’EUCC-France. De la connaissance des systèmes littoraux à la gestion intégrée des zones côtières was published gathering these experiences.

The international Secretariat and the Mediterranean Centre leads the multidisciplinary international partnership which developed the first on-line, free of use distance training programme on ICZM, CoastLearn,[16] available in 13 languages. This self-learning tool targets primarily coastal managers and planners working at local, sub-national, and national levels and is accessible on-line free of charge. Furthermore, EUCC-Germany counts with a similar tool, IKZM-D Lernen. This was one of the many projects undertaken by EUCC-Germany.[17] Another example dealing with academic education is the recent Climate of Coastal Cooperation initiative with young professionals, which has followed the publication of the Climate of Coastal Cooperation,[18] co-produced by EUCC. This initiative aims to establish a Young Professionals Coastal Community (YPCC), based on the principle that innovative, resilient, no-regret adaptive options should involve young professionals at an early stage through familiarising them with the concepts and tools of ICZM.

EUCC aims to contribute to improving coastal and marine policies leading to sustainable development. Already at its earliest times EUCC contributed significantly to the preparation of the Pan-European Biological and Landscape Diversity Strategy (PEBLDS), adopted in 1995 by the Environment for Europe Ministers Conference and led the elaboration of the European Coastal & Marine Ecological Network (ECMEN) [5][19] and the European Code of Conduct for Coastal Zones [7] adopted by the Council of Europe Ministers in 1999.

The 1st European Coastal Conservation Conference 1991, organised by the EUCC and the Dutch government, marked the start of the development of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) as a policy approach in the European Community. It led to the EC Demonstration Programme for ICZM and to the adoption of the European Council and Parliament Recommendation on ICZM (2002). EUCC was invited by the European Commission to join the EU ICZM Expert Group; Dr. Alan Pickaver was EUCC's representative in this expert group until August 2013. As a result, a novel means for Member States to measure the progress they are making on ICZM implementation through the use of indicators was developed. This method was presented to the Working Group on Indicators and data and accepted by the Group of Experts in 2006.

In recent times EUCC has placed efforts on the practical implications of ICZM implementation, developing practical tools as DeCyDe for Sustainability [20] and the use of ICZM and Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) as tools for climate change adaptation. It is deeply involved in the implementation of the MSFD being part of the Technical Subgroup Marine Litter (TSG-ML) and acting as Technical Secretariat to the Technical Subgroups on Marine Litter and Underwater Noise.

In the field of sustainable coastal tourism EUCC has created tools to monitor coastal destination management and set up an award and certification programme “QualityCoast” which enables coastal towns, regions and parks to meet global standards as a sustainable tourism destination. EUCC's QualityCoast Team is doing research into social issues related to sustainable tourism[21] and also responsible for the Global Sustainable Tourism Review.[22]

Land erosion restoration in Cap des Trois Fourches (Morocco) within ABIPA C3F project

EUCC has a long record of field projects implementation related to nature conservation, especially in delta, wetlands and dune areas of the Baltic, Black sea and Mediterranean coast. Most projects deal with wetland restoration in former intensive agriculture grounds. In this regard, one of the most remarkable milestones has been the protection of ca. 4000 ha of coastal meadows, wetlands, forest and lagoon waters at the eastern, Polish part of the Szczecin Lagoon (Oder Delta). Coastal & Marine Union (EUCC) and EUCC Poland have joined efforts along the years to establish the first privately managed Nature Park in Poland, the Odra Delta Nature Park. EUCC Poland is the owner of ca. 1000 ha while the rest belongs to the Forestry and Maritime offices and some small private owners. The area belongs now to the Natura 2000 network. Stakeholders’ engagement, hydrological restoration, reintroduction of extensive grazing, eco-tourism development and educational programmes have resulted on a good practice example of international recognition.[23] A development strategy for the community was drawn up [24] to embrace the opportunities which the Nature values of the area afforded. This has led to the area developing a niche market for eco-tourism with new occupations alongside more traditional ones.

In Morocco, following an ICZM plan project (CAP Nador) in the province of Nador, a complementary project (ABIPA C3F) allowed restoring 18,6 ha from erosion by planting fruit trees, in Cap des Trois Fourches.

In the North Sea, EUCC has contributed to the recovery of stable subtidal and intertidal mussel beds in the Dutch Wadden Sea through the Mosselwad project. Another important initiative is “Protect a wreck”, aimed at protecting and cleaning these notable biodiversity sites. Linked to this, the HealthySeas initiative consists on recycling abandoned fishing nets in the sea to recycle them into nylon fabric.

Finally, in the Black Sea, a project in Bulgaria and Romania allowed listing priority regions marine protected areas (MPAs) designation and the development of ecologically coherent network of MPAs in these countries.

One of the core fields of EUCC has been facilitating information exchange, with the ultimate goal of bridging the gap between scientists and policy makers. Regarding ICZM, EUCC played an important role in building up the OURCOAST database for the European Commission, ensuring that lessons learned from the coastal management experiences and practices are shared and made accessible.

In this context EUCC has been one of the initiators of the ENCORA[25] European network of coastal management networks and its main achievement, the Coastal Wiki,[26] an internet based encyclopaedia, adapting the model of Wikipedia. The Wikipedia concept complements present knowledge dissemination practices and mitigates major shortcomings: scientific publications only accessible to experts, lack of interdisciplinary links, difficult access to practical knowledge and experience due to dispersal over grey literature sources, lack of comprehensiveness and consistency among sources, not freely accessible literature and sources which are not up to date, and delays in establishing intellectual property rights through traditional publishing routes.