Study On Measuring The Performance Of Integrated Coastal Management In Quanzhou

Integrated Coastal Management (ICM) is an international management approach for coastal governance to promote sustainable coastal development, which has been initiated in over100nations around the world. In China, over ten coastal cities have adopted the ICM framework to tackle with the environmental and management challenges. Using indicators to monitor and measure the progress and effectiveness of ICM could help adjust and improve the ICM frameworks and furtherly achieving the ICM goals. To date, few studies however have been done to assess the performance of ICM implemented in those cities.Quanzhou, a typical coastal city located in southeast China, is one of most densely populated and developed area in Fujian province, which also facing severe coastal environmental challenges. Therefore, it joined the GEF/UNDP/UNOPS-PEMSEA’s ICM Scaling Up Programme in2005, acting as an ICM parallel site to implement an ICM programme to promote sustainable development of its coastal area.This study reviewed theoretical and practical researches related with ICM performance and its indicators, and constructed an indicator system of ICM performance measurement adapted to China’s coast, which was applied to measure the ICM performance in Quanzhou from2004to2010by using Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) methods. The major results of this study were presented in the followings.(1) The ICM performance indicator system consisted of3sub-systems, namely ICM governance, coastal ecological environment and coastal social economic development.9criteria levels and34indicators were slected based on3sub-systems and the measurement criterrion for each indicator was defined.(2) ICM governance performance in Quanzhou had been improved from2004to2010. The results evaluated by AHP method showed that the average annual growth rate of ICM governance index was23.6%, but the performance of ICM governance was still in fair level in2010, especially the legal and institutional capacity for ICM needs to be strengthened. The results evaluated by PCA showed that the ICM governance perforamance had been improved greatly from2004to2010, indicating that it may be capable for Quanzhou to run a new round of ICM.(3) Coastal ecological environment had been improved slowly from2004to2010. The AHP results showed that the average annual growth rate of coastal ecological index was7.6%, and the coastal environment statu was in fine level in2010. PCA results showed that the coastal environment status in2005was worse than2004due to the decreased species number of benthic animals, but the overall trend of coastal enviromement status was increasing.(4) Social economic development index of Quanzhou increased steadily from2004-2010. The AHP results showed that the average annual growth rate of social economic index was46.0%, general social economic development tended to develop in a sustainable way, but coastal hazard management needed to be strengthened. The PCA results showed that the annual growth rate of social economic development performance was quite stable, indicating that its development may be sustainable.(5) The ICM performance of Quanzhou had been improved from2004to2010. The AHP results showed that the average annual growth rate was18.0%;2005-2006the ICM performance was in "fair" level;2007-2010, the ICM performance was in "fine" level.The PCA results showed that the ICM performance in2005was in "bad" level, it was in "fair" level in2006-2008and was in "fine" level in2009-2010. Therefore, there was still a certain distance to achieve the goal of coastal sustainability, the ICM performance should be improved in the future.(6) According to the measurement results, major management problems for ICM in Quanzhou included a lack of ICM plan, poor implementation of adaptive mechanism, poor coordination mechanism between land and sea management, inadequate coastal information system, a lack of external ICM funding. Based on the above analysis, this study proposed an ICM performance monitoring system for Quanzhou, which could provide scientific evidence for decision makers to adjust and develop ICM goals and management frameworks in the future to balance costal economic development and environmental sustainability.