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IntroductionJames Tobey & Kem LowryPublished online: 11 Nov 2010.

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Coastal Management, 30:283–284, 2002Copyright ã 2002 Taylor & Francis0892-0753 /02 $12.00 + .00DOI: 10.1080/08920750290021 9

Introduction to Special Section on Learning fromthe Practice of Integrated Coastal Management

This special section includes three papers originally presented at a workshop on CrossPortfolio Learning in ICM, held in May 2001, on Block Island, Rhode Island. Twoquestions dominated the preworkshop planning:

· What has been learned from three decades of ICM practice? What are the key unan-swered questions?

· How might we learn more effectively from practice?

The emphasis on learning from coastal management practice is based on severalpremises. First, as Lowry notes in his paper in this section, the importance of coastalmanagement for food security, poverty alleviation, conservation of biodiversity, reducedrisk from natural hazards, and economic development has grown dramatically. ICM hasbecome an important subfield of environmental management. Second, the dramatic in-crease in the number of sovereign and semisovereign nations that have developed coastalmanagement programs—as many as 95 in 2000 (Sorensen, 2000)—reflects a potentialmarketplace for ideas about how to manage more effectively and efficiently. A third keyassumption is that “learning from practice” can be a deliberate, organized endeavor.

Organized learning strategies by members of an organization take two primaryforms: learning by doing and learning by exploring (Ebrahim & Ortolono, 2001). In itssimplest form learning by doing involves repeating an organizational routine that isassociated with success and, if possible, improving it (Levitt & March, 1988). Environ-mental impact statements are an example of a much used management mechanism thathas been the object of much “learning by doing.” In some countries and provinces it is arequired mechanism for generating information about impacts associated with particulartypes of proposed projects such as coastal power plants or resorts. In some jurisdictions,experience with EIS requirements has led to significant modification and adaptation havingto do with the types of projects for which it is required, the types of impacts that have tobe considered, and acceptable forms of impact analysis.

Another type of learning, exploration, involves “search, variation, risk-taking, ex-perimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation” (March, 1991). Borrowing or imitatingis another form of exploration. Organizations “also learn from one another by taking onthe routines, hierarchies, or technologies of other organizations” (Ebrahim & Ortolono,2001). The current diffusion of the use of marine sanctuaries as a strategy for commu-nity-level fisheries management suggests widespread borrowing or mimicry.

While the term wasn’t used in the workshop, most of the discussions involved “ex-ploratory” learning strategies. In their exploration, participants talked about precondi-tions necessary for cost-effective ICM investments, attributes of sustainable programs,effective management tools for various coastal problems, and related topics.

The three workshop background articles in this special section were part of thatexploratory process. The first article, “Learning Frontiers in the Practice of Integrated

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284 Introduction to the Special Section

Coastal Management,” describes why collaborative learning across collective experienceis important for ICM at this time. Tobey and Volk observe that ICM practice has ma-tured in the decade since the Rio conference. Extensive field practice and increasingdemand for ICM have given us a platform from which to test and advance what havebecome general consensus features of ICM practice. Learning has become a focus indonor-funded ICM projects in tropical developing countries. This focus has led to theidentification of several learning topics—pilot project strategies, project mainstreaming,capacity building, and decentralized governance. The authors conclude that donors andICM professionals are gaining experience with the use of structured learning networksthat seek to share information and improve understanding of good practice on these andother topics.

In the second article, “The Landscape of ICM Learning Activities,” Lowry criticallysurveys major deliberate inquiry strategies and identifies ICM examples of each. Henotes that the “lessons” derived from these inquiry strategies are expressed as stories,“rules of thumb,” best practices, and propositions. He outlines some strategies for im-proving the quality of our exploratory inquiry strategies.

In “Assessing Progress Toward the Goals of Coastal Management,” Olsen describesexperience with the use of formative evaluation in Latin America. One message fromthese formative evaluations of major donor-funded ICM projects in Latin America isthat ICM principles are well known, but operational knowledge of ICM good practicesis uneven. Poor project design and unrealistic expectations are found to be the primarycause for the failure of initiatives to progress beyond a phase of planning and to achievethe type of outcomes anticipated. Peer review and formative evaluation techniques pro-mote learning by assessing both strengths and weaknesses of ICM initiatives and chart-ing strategies based on other experience to improve effectiveness and impacts.

We hope this theme section will encourage more attention to ICM learning agendas,inquiry strategies, and processes for developing “lessons” from practice.

References

Ebrahim, A., and L. Ortolano. 2001. Learning processes in development planning: A theoretical overviewand case study. Journal of Planning Education and Research 20(4):448–463.

Levitt, B., and J. G. March. 1988. Organizational learning. Annual Review of Sociology 14:319–340.March, J. G. 1991. Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science 2(1):

15–35.Sorensen, J. 2000. Baseline 2000. Background paper for Coastal Zone Canada 2000: Coastal Stewardship—

Lessons Learned and the Paths Ahead, September 17–22, New Brunswick, Canada, http://sybertooth.ca/czczcc2000/.

James Tobey, Ph.D., Guest EditorThe Coastal Resources CenterUniversity of Rhode IslandNarragansett, Rhode Island

Kem Lowry, Ph.D., Guest EditorDepartment of Urban and Regional PlanningUniversity of HawaiiHonolulu, Hawaii

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