Issue # 26 - November 2008
 INCREASING THE IMPACT OF OUR COMMON KNOWLEDGE SOURCE, THE COASTAL WIKI
The Coastal Wiki has been initiated as a response to two major shortcomings of present knowledge sharing practices: (1) the high degree of specialisation of scientific journals, which tends to confine new knowledge within a small community of fellow experts, and to prevent its transfer to practice; (2) a lack of facilities for publication of easily accessible, reliable and up-to-date information for practical use.

The ENCORA community has embraced the Coastal Wiki concept as a very convenient facility to share practical knowledge and experience. Every week ENCORA members add on average a dozen of information pages to the Coastal Wiki, which contains already articles and definitions on almost 1100 items. Each day the Coastal Wiki is consulted by more than 100 visitors. A team of Coastal Wiki adepts continuously watches over the accessibility, consistency and comprehensiveness by creating internal links and categories; they also revise titles to facilitate information search and access through Google.

At the Littoral conference in Venice a special Coastal Wiki session will be organized on 25 November. At this session Coastal Wiki users will present and discuss their experience with several interesting applications:
- for education, through E-Learning or as a teaching tool in master courses;
- for publication of manuals and atlases;
- for dissemination of project results.
Guidelines for these applications will be published afterwards in the Coastal Wiki.

In spite of all these efforts, we have found from several inquiries that many potential users are still not aware of the Coastal Wiki. You can help increasing the impact of the Coastal Wiki by spreading the word, or even better, by incorporating a link to the Coastal Wiki in the website of your institute or your project, or in other relevant websites. You can also greatly contribute to the value of the Coastal Wiki by adding comments in the discussion pages. Links to websites with complementary information the author was not aware of, are especially useful. Many thanks for your help!



International news is in this issue
INCREASING THE IMPACT OF OUR COMMON KNOWLEDGE SOURCE, THE COASTAL WIKI
ENCORA WORKSOP Carrying Capacity and Development of the Wadden Sea, 29-31 October
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 ENCORA WORKSOP Carrying Capacity and Development of the Wadden Sea, 29-31 October
A group of experts on coastal zone management from Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands discussed on the island of Ameland the issue of the carrying capacity and development of the Wadden Sea. The aim of the meeting was to identify ways to handle development issues in a nature conservation area like the Wadden Sea. In the Wadden Sea several EU Directives apply: the Habitat and Bird Directives, obliging EU member states to set conservation targets for specific species and habitat types and the Water Framework Directive, for preserving or reaching a ‘good ecological status’.

Under these Directives, development in or nearby these protected areas can only proceed under special conditions and as long as there is no adverse effect on the conservation targets. In highly dynamic and complex environments such as the Wadden Sea, forecasts of project impacts are always ridden with uncertainty. This implies that the significance of effects is often subject to debate. In addition, estuaries are generally already heavily developed, and subject to increasing pressure for more development. Therefore almost all new developments have a potential for significant effects on protected wildlife and there is little space left for alternative locations or compensation areas.

The current legal framework does not give justice to the dynamics in coastal ecosystem. An alternative way of setting targets is to set criteria for the ecosystem processes rather than the ecosystem status and to describe plausible developments by scenario analysis. In current practice, one can avoid being trapped in rigid legislation by working together with all stakeholders at an early stage of project planning. This calls for an adaptive management strategy.

Adaptive management is defined as a structured, iterative process of optimal decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim of reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring. In this way, decision making simultaneously maximizes one or more resource objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. The participants of the workshop discussed the application of an adaptive management strategy in several case studies concerning human activities in the Wadden Sea environment: Extraction of natural gas, Tidal energy, Aquaculture and Eutrophication.
The major findings resulting from these discussions are reported in the Coastal Wiki.



 




Colophon
The ENCORA objective is to facilitate and create new opportunities for sharing knowledge and experience on coastal issues in Europe. This electronic newsletter will inform you frequently about the activities and achievements of the network. Every issue will contain a section with news about your national network or ICZM related topics in your country.

This electronic newsletter may be forwarded freely to others working in the ICZM fields. If you would like to receive the ENCORA Newsletter directly, please contact your national coordinator or subscribe to www.encora.org. News-items for publication can be send to encore@rikz.rws.minvenw.nl.