ABSTRACT
In Japan, the national ocean policy encourages integrated coastal management (ICM) with the aim of integrating measures and projects that have been separately and vertically carried out among sectors and other entities with appropriate consideration of promoting sustainable management of coastal areas. There is no ICM-related institution within the central government yet, but many voluntary activities have been ongoing for some time with the potential to feed into an ICM process in the future. Most of them are derived from the traditional community-based management or co-management approach called ‘sato-umi’ or ‘new sato-umi’. Located in Nagasaki Prefecture, the case of Omura Bay may be considered a ‘new Sato-umi’ approach involving both local communities (including fishermen) and the local government (municipality) supported by the prefectural government (Hidaka 2011) under a matrix management system (Browning 2001). Because Omura Bay is a closed water body, its environment easily deteriorates. Since the 1970s, there have been serious problems with water quality. To remediate it, in 2004, the Nagasaki prefectural government formulated the Omura Bay Restoring and Revitalizing Action Plan (OBRRAP). This plan is comprehensive, but its coordinating organization and process operate in a top-down central government approach. Besides this, various activities carried out by municipalities, fishers, resident groups and NGOs are linked through a network system managed by the prefectural government and could develop into a multi-scale management system in the future. The I-ADApT template was used to elucidate the various dimensions of this situation in Omura Bay and the response of the governing and social systems to the issue of poor water quality and loss of fisheries production. The ‘new Sato-umi’ in Omura Bay has had some success, but more is required to fully restore water quality and species richness. (Browning, T. R. 2001. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management 48(3): 292–306; Hidaka, T. 2011. Proceedings of 9th International Conference on the Environmental Management of Enclosed Coastal Seas [EMECS 9].)
