Study On Shoreline Management Based On Land/Sea Integration

Shoreline is valuable natural resources given to human beings, not only offering wealth of resources and space for developing economy and improving living standards, but coastal ecosystems also plays an important role in regulating local water resources and water power, reducing and mitigating climate change, preventing erosion, storm, and maintening air quality. However, the high intensity of human activities are leading to the effects that the natural shoreline loss, as well as the habitat degradation are becoming increasingly serious. Currently there are still a lot of controversy over shoreline, the theory and practice of shoreline management and coastal zone management in the academic and administrative circles. In order to provide basis for decision making to establish the shoreline management system that is suitable for China’s national conditions. it is very urgent to clarify the relationship among them in theory. In this thesis, the technique and system of shoreline management has been systematically studied through the comprehensive utilization of theory and method of marine science, environmental science, public policy and law based on land/sea integration. Finally, the following conclusions are drawn.1) The shoreline is defined as the boundary between land and sea by the sense of Science and Law. However, the dynamic and virtual line does not have a significant meaning in the management. The shoreline in plan and management is actually not a line, but a zone, which refers to a transitional zone with intense interaction between ocean and land;2) Natural environment elements of the shoreline, which extends some distance to land and ocean respectively constitute complete shoreline ecosystem. Lack of any part of land or sea will lead to damage and destruction on environmental resources of entire ecosystems. Therefore, in order to achieve effective protection and rational utilization of natural environmental resources of shoreline, the shoreline area must be treated as a relatively independent and complete ecosystem and be synthesizedly managed as premise, in other words, shoreline management based on land/sea integration must be implemented;3) Problems of shoreline in China includes use conflicts of shoreline, low use efficiency integrately of shoreline, phenomenon of seriously wasting, damaging shoreline resources, high percentage of non-functional occupation with shoreline resources, destruction of natural shoreline, high degree of artificial shoreline, destruction of seashore ecological function and landscape, lack of public charity. Reasons for these problems include conflicts of laws and the resulting unclear division of management responsibilities, difficulties of inter-sectoral coordination, as well as that shoreline is not treated as a special area for planning and management resulting from the lack of laws, none unified standards in different region, lack of technical support to divide shoreline, and insufficient understanding of the shoreline value;4) To implement shoreline management based on land/sea integration, developing techniques of determining shoreline range, shoreline master plan, shoreline using priority, no net-loss of ecological function in shoreline use activies, and public participation techniques are needed;5) To improve our shoreline management policies, the system of minimum statutory area of shoreline, shoreline use approval system, paid use of the coastline, shoreline ecological damage compensation systems, and guidelines for shoreline planning techniques are urgent to establish.