SOUTH AFRICAN INTEGRATED COASTAL MANAGEMENT AND ENGINEERING: CONVERGING TOWARDS COLLISION OR COLLABORATION?

SUMMARY

The history and development of South Africa has been linked strongly to the sea over the past 500 years, since the first visits by the early Portuguese navigators in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. The earliest coastal development was associated with the construction of ports and harbours, and the country now has six commercial ports equipped with modem facilities, as well as a number of smaller ports used mainly by the fishing fleets. Construction of some of these has presented particular challenges, because of the littoral drift and its impact on adjacent beaches. Since the 1950s. a series of excellent facilities and amenities, including tidal pools and small craft marinas, has been developed for recreation, and the management of effluent has been managed through the construction of Ocean outfalls. On the South African west coast, and extending into Namibia, there are rich coastal and offshore marine diamond deposits, and innovative approaches have been developed to allow their mining. For all of these developments, up-to-date, accurate environmental information has been a key input, and appropriate measuring networks and data-management techniques and facilities have been developed to allow the use of the information. Worldwide there has been a growing awareness of environmental issues. In 1992, one of the world's largest international environmental meetings took place in Rio De Janeiro. There, coastal states were urged to commit themselves to integrated and sustainable development of coastal areas, so giving impetus to the already growing international trend towards integrated coastal zone management (ICZM). People are adopting and demanding an integrated and holistic approach in the coastal area. South Africa was until recently excluded from the international community. Perhaps the most significant development in ICZM in South Africa is the participatory policy-formulation programme launched in the mid 1990s that will address the shortcomings currently experienced. Indeed, South Africa is poised on the brink of major advances in the field of ICZM. It is predicted that the country will become a major force in the advancement of all spheres of ICZM in both East Africa and the whole African continent. Historically, coastal engineering proceeded with little regard for the environment, in many cases with devastating effects, from environmental, economic and social points of view. As the years went by, and information became more freely available, there was a growing awareness that the environment had to form part of the calculations, formulae and debate of coastal engineers and other interest groups operating in the coastal area. Therefore, over the past 30 years, marine and environmental scientists and coastal engineers in South Africa developed methodologies that allowed a holistic approach to the technological support for judicious development of the coastal and marine resources of South Africa. The path of increasing collaboration was initially fraught with conflict between engineers and environmentally orientated coastal managers. Recently, the two viewpoints have increasingly converged, and at present it would appear that a new breed of professional, coastal development scientists, consisting of coastal engineers and coastal, marine and environmental scientists, will be playing a key role in the sustainable development of our coastal resources.