Crowded Coasts

Development and Use of the Coast

• Development is about exploiting resources

• By sharing out land among competing users, the competition
for land is usually resolved
• Those who can pay most end up occupying the sites that suit
them best
• Competition for the coastal space mainly comes from
activities such as tourism, heavy industry, agriculture and
fishing
• The growth of these activities is likely to have a negative
impact on the wildlife and the scenery that makes the area
appealing
• Competition for the land often results in conflict
• This conflict and competition also occurs in the offshore zone
• For example, trawling, diving/angling, crab and lobster potting
and scallop dredging

Pressure on Coastal Environments

• The intensity of the demand for space along the coast puts
pressure on the natural environment
• There are at least 3 habitats or ecosystems that are becoming
seriously degraded: coral reefs, mangroves and salt marshes
Coral Reefs – Case Study

• Structures produced by living organisms

• Found in shallow, tropical marine waters
• Support a great variety of animal and plant life
• The value of coral reefs lies in:
• Their biodiversity
• The protection they afford to low-lying
coasts
• Their rich fish stocks
• Their recreation and tourism appeal
• Coral is a living thing and is highly sensitive to changes in
temperature and water quality
• Reefs are easily stressed by a variety of human actions; if the
stress persists, decline leading to death soon sets in
• Reefs are under threat from pollution, over fishing and ocean
acidification
• In some areas of the world they are quarried for building
material
Mangroves – Case Study

• Trees and shrubs that grow in saline coastal habitats in the

tropics and subtropics
• Vital nurseries for fish and crustaceans, and are rich in wildlife
• Mangrove roots that are exposed and low tide, trap silt and
help to create new land
• Mangrove timber provides fuel and building materials
• The greatest value of mangroves is the protection from storm
surges they give to low-lying areas
• The World Conservation Union (IUCN) compared the death toll
from two villages in Sri Lanka that were hit by the Asian
Tsunami:
 2 people died in the settlement with dense
mangrove and shrub forest
 6,000 people died in the village without this
vegetation
• A popular view of mangrove swamps is that they are disease-
ridden
• They are being cleared very quickly to provide timber, sites
for tourist resorts and shrimp aquaculture
Salt Marshes – Case Study

• Found along low coasts where boggy ground is flooded by sea

water either every day or less often
• Many UK salt marshes have been reclaimed for farm land, but
those that do remain provide valuable habitats where salt-
tolerant plants grow and birds nest
• Salt marshes play a vital role in coastal protection:
 The tidal energy is reduced by the meandering
creeks, which allow the sea water to flow in and
out
 Marsh plants reduce wave energy
• Salt marshes are among the most threatened ecosystems
• Specific threats include:
 Reclamation – due to the perception that marshes
are wasted space and can be drained for develop
 Industrial pollution – particularly of water, as many
marshes occur in estuaries which are human
activity hotspots
 Agricultural pollution – leading to eutrophication
 Shipping and pleasure boating, which cause
‘wash’ that leads to die-back of marsh vegetation
 Pressure from developments such as marinas and
recreational facilities
• Salt marshes are also threatened by changes associated with
global warming:
 The increasing frequency of high-impact storms
 Changing temperature and rainfall regimes that
can affect the tolerance of marsh plants
 Sea-level rises that are occurring too quickly for
the marsh ecosystems to adjust
Land Reclamation around Tokyo Bay

• Around 75% of Japan’s land surface is mountainous and

unsuitable for settlement
• Usable land is fragmented, occurring in small, detached
coastal lowlands
• Until the 20th century, wetland reclamation was undertaken
mainly to provide land for agriculture
• During the 20th century, the prime motivators were
urbanisation and industrial development
• Between 1950 and the oil crisis of 1973, an estimated 110,000
hectares of new land were created around Tokyo Bay
• This was to provide space for Tokyo and the other cities which
make up the large metropolitan area that now accommodates
over 25 million people
• The land was used for new port installations, heavy industrial
developments, such as oil refineries and steelwork, housing
and an airport expansion
• Since the mid-1970s, the scale of the reclamation of the land
has declined. This is because of:
 A slowdown in the rate of economic growth
 Pollution of water caused by landfill used in some
of the reclamation work
 The discovery that during strong earthquakes,
reclaimed land loses its load-bearing capacity
 The vulnerability of low-lying ground to tsunamis
as a result of sea level rise due to global warming
 Environmental concern that the lost mudflat
habitat and its wildlife should be restored
 Making the waterfront a place of leisure and
recreation rather than development