Towards an effective framework for coastal zone management: the Egyptian experience

Coastal areas are among the most highly populated, most exploited areas and vulnerable ecosystems in the world. How these interface areas between terrestrial and marine environments can effectively planned and managed has proved to be extremely challenging. Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) has been promoted as a potential panacea for the effective planning and management of these areas. However achieving such goals for ICZM is complex because of the many human activities and diverse regulatory regimes in coastal areas requires effective integration along many dimensions. Within the context of the developing world, which is often characterised by highly centralised governance systems combined with a lack of effective public and stakeholder participation in planning delivering an effective ICZM, which is drawn from collaborative planning ideas has proved particularly problematic. Furthermore within these countries there have been few critical and analytical evaluations of why ICZM experiments have failed. This paper seeks to begin to address this gap by suggesting that Actor Network Theory (ANT) is an appropriate analytical framework to critically evaluate why ICZM initiatives in Egypt, at both the national and local level, have been relatively unsuccessful. The critical evaluation leads to some practical recommendations that could help to enhance the implementation of ICZM in Egypt.