What does coastal development have in common with wetland protection? More than you think!
In a new Open-Access paper that I co-authored with members of my SHIFTING SHORES project team, we illuminate the counterintuitive but strong relationship between coastal development and protection in Mediterranean deltas.
Between the 1960s and the 1980s, the Rhone, Po, and Ebro Deltas were facing a new wave of coastal development that would have likely led to the complete disappearance of their surviving wetlands.
At the same time, wetland advocates, including Swiss philantropist and ornithologist Hoffman, were conducting unprecedented international campaign for wetland protection.
However, they were coating their plea for wetlands in the language of economic value. Wetlands were “liquid assets.”
This language of economic value aimed at demonstrating that wetland protection could rhyme with coastal development through land use planning.
It echoed the approach and ideas of regional planning, which in the same decades, thought of nature conservation as tool for economic development.
Was it a sellout of conservationists’ ambitions? We interpret it as a pragmatic approach to coalition-building, which succeeded in establishing protection for coastal wetlands against all odds.
We also emphasize the role of the regional park framework, despite the criticisms it has attracted.
Whatever your take is on the value of this outcome, it surely offers broader lessons on nature protection and coalition-building in times of accelerating developmental pressure, in coastal areas and beyond.
I hope you will read the whole paper!
Giacomo Parrinello 