■ As human populations increase and migrate to the coasts, so do the uses for and demands on coastal and marine space. No place is this more evident than in the Pacific Islands where development has often been carried out without full consideration of the impacts on the natural environment or the integrity of traditional coastal communities. Historically, the ocean has been primarily used for fisheries, transportation and recreation. Today, however, sewage, research, tourism, protected areas, military training, aquaculture, wind and wave energy, and ocean thermal energy conversion are competing for increasingly limited coastal and marine space.
Coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP) is an approach to address the conflicts among the various existing and future uses of the coastal and marine environment. CMSP is also one of the nine…
