A Systems Approach for Sustainable Development in Coastal Zones

Abstract

"This Special Feature of Ecology and Society brings together important outcomes of the EU-funded project: Science-Policy Integration for Coastal System Assessment, SPICOSA. The title of the project revealed its innovative nature from the start. The premise was to bind scientific information to policy decisions and to consider the coastal zone as an integrated ecological-social-economic system. As a result, the SPICOSA project was very broad, ambitious, and required multidisciplinary teams of researchers to work together: natural scientists such as oceanographers and ecologists, social scientists, economists, and modelers. In itself, this was a tour de force. In addition, the project required a participatory role from stakeholders or actors, e.g., institutions, NGOs, economic sectors, etc., as well as from coastal managers and decision makers."