Sustainable resolution of conflicts over coastal values: a case study of the Gold Coast Surf Management Plan

Abstract

Integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) has been widely adopted by Australian states as the preferred basis for addressing the negative impacts of development on the social and environmental values of the coast. Given the ongoing failure to arrest the declining condition of social and environmental values of the Australian coast and mounting pressures of growing population and climate change there is growing interest to alternative approaches to ICZM. This paper reports on a case study of Queensland’s Gold Coast where despite an established ICZM policy recreational surfers continued to see their values for the coast threatened and damaged by government sanctioned development. As an alternative to ICZM surfers successfully repositioned their values within the coastal development policy agenda by establishing a partnership with government to develop a surfing institutional structure.