Integrated Coastal Area And River Basin Management In Jiaozhou Bay

Jiaozhou Bay is a typical semi-enclosed bay affected by human activities in China. It is now challenged by the following main issues, i.e. the shrinking area of the Bay and the decreasing tidal prism, the increasing coastal pollution and degrading water quality. The current sector management system cannot address these issues radically and successfull. In addition, the recent released urban development plan for Qingdao will make it more difficult and complex with regards to environmental protection and coastal management in the region of Jiaozhou Bay. The present dissertation is dedicated to the protection of the Bay and its basin.It adopts the system approach, GIS method, DPSIR framework, and SWOT analysis as well as some important thoughts of institutional economics to analyze and assess the status quo of environment and management in Jiaozhou Bay and its catchment. It then presents one of the best institutional path options for protecting Jiaozhou Bay by linking integrated water resource management and integrated coastal zone management, namely, Integrated Coastal Area and River Basin Management (ICARM). Relevant institutional design and arrangement, and strategic analysis are added to the proposal.This dissertation reviews the current management approaches in water resources management, coastal management and the research progress on land-ocean interaction in the coastal area and progress about Jiaozhou Bay and its catchment. The new concept of Catchment-Coast Continuum is also defined and explained. It then introduces the general theory and method system of ICARM. Based on the natural geography, the watershed delineation is conducted with GIS method and the watershed boundaries are compared with the administrative boundaries of the Shandong peninsula. It is argued that the management boundary for ICARM in Jiaozhou Bay and its basin can be the same or similar to the current administrative boundaries.In the next section, the catchment-bay interaction in Jiaozhou Bay is analyzed by the DPSIR framework and the current management system in Jiaozhou Bay and its basin is also examined. The Drivers in the research include national development-oriented policy, local population growth, economic boost, and urbanization; the environmental Pressures are expressed by the supply and demand of and their impacts on water resources and land resources; the State and Impact represent the environmental state change of and its impacts on the Bay and its catchment; the Response implies the measures taken to tackle or alleviate the impacts and its beyond. In reality, the socioeconomic and urbanization in Qingdao developed in a relative fast speed under the national development policy in the past decades. This then caused the reduction of the quantity and quality of arable land and water resources. Therefore the environment was under pressures to change, and the state changes include the degradation of the water quality and the reduction of river runoff in the catchment, variation of the nutrient concentrations and distribution as well as the nutrient structure in the Bay, area of the Bay, its tidal prism. This environmental change had substantial impacts on the Jiaozhou Bay and its basin, says, increasing pollution and more frequent eutrophication, habitat degradation and biodiversity loss, change in phytoplankton structure and composition. Some response had been taken, such as river ecological restoration, increasing wastewater networks and capacity of wastewater treatment. However those were from the perspective of sector management and cannot change the degradation trend radically. The present dissertation argues to adopt ICARM approach to address the dilemma.Based on the above results, the proposed institutional design and arrangements of this ICARM approach includes the establishment of the Jiaozhou Bay-Dagu River Management Committee, the Jiaozhou Bay Partnership Forum and the Jiaozhou Bay Foundation of Environmental Protection. These proposed arrangements will address the fragmentation of Jiaozhou Bay and its catchment in terms of management, overtake the disadvantages of sector management and take advantages of integrated management, promote the democratic and participatory management. It will also increase the financial investment, which is often in short and an utmost key in the field of environmental protection. What follows on, the SWOT analysis is conducted to examine the internal strength and opportunity and the external weakness and threat with regards to the implementation of the proposal in the Jiaozhou Bay. The Strength includes but not limit to the ideal natural geography in terms of the catchment size and the almost overlay of the catchment boundary with the administration boundary, the relative developed economy of the Jiaozhou Bay region as well as its rich resources in the Sci-Tech of marine sciences, while the Weakness includes but not limits to complex composition of the coastal rivers, location of heavy pollution industries, lack of research in the catchment side. The Opportunity is the global and regional promoation of ICARM approach and the increasing awareness of enviornmetnal protection in China, while the threat includes the lack of case studies and experience of ICARM, and the-wicked-problem nature of public administion. It is suggested that much attention should be paid to capacity building in order to take advantage of the strength and opportunity while overcome the weakness and reduce or even eliminate the threat.