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International Journal of Marine Science 2013, Vol.3, No.46, 389-401
http://ijms.sophiapublisher.com
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to achieve integration at all levels among all kinds of
institutions which are working on coastal activities, the
proposed national strategy has not developed any
scheme to address this issue”
.
The previous argument regarding the integration in
coastal management in Egypt strongly raises these
questions: What mechanisms have been used in the
ICZM initiatives in both phases to tackle these
problems? And are they effective?
In 1996, the EEAA established the NCICZM, which
set out to achieve horizontal integration between
ministries by bringing all of the concerned ministries
together. However, the committee has not practiced its
mandates and has been inactive (El-Ghorab, 2005,
World Bank, 2005). In this regard, one of the
interviewees commented that:
“the NCICZM has been
inactive for several years which mean that policy
dialogue and consistency analysis between
governmental stakeholders with different visions on the
use of coastal areas had also been reduced or
disappeared”
.
In the ICZM second phase, the EEAA re-established
the NCICZM at the end of 2007 as a first step in
applying for funding from PAP/RAC to prepare the
national ICZM strategy. However, many of the
participants in the first workshop for preparing the
national ICZM claimed that the NCICZM cannot
fulfill its intended function without having a technical
sub-committee which would include experts and
managers from all the agencies working and helping
the NCICZM to perform its role (EEAA, 2009c).
Furthermore, Ibrahim (2009) argues that, in most
cases, representatives in the NCICZM are not
authorized to take decisions and they do not report
progress to higher levels which makes participation
ineffective. In this regard, one of the interviewees
suggested that:
“The top ranked employees who are
members of the NCICZM in most cases could not
attend the meetings of the committee. Instead they sent
their assistants to attend which affected the
decision-making process of the committee”
. A review
of the attendance list of the three workshops for
preparing the national ICZM confirms this
interviewee’s observation. Table 2 shows the members
of the NCICZM who should attend the workshops and
the real attendance list of the three workshops. For
example, the head of the Tourism Development
Authority (TDA) did not attend and sent the
environmental sector manager instead; similarly, the
EEAA Executive Director did not attend and sent
the head of the coastal and marine zones
management department instead(EEAA, 2009a,
EEAA, 2009c, EEAA, 2009b). Such circumstance
gives the impression that the committee is not
powered by the key actors and the use of assistants
means that decisions are difficult to make.
Therefore, the committee is still not able to fulfil its
intended function.
Based on the above, it clearly seems that the first
phase of ICZM in Egypt had no effective integration
mechanisms at the national level. Furthermore,
although Egypt has the NCICZM in the second phase,
it seems to be an ineffective integration mechanism.
Although the three workshops for preparing the
national ICZM strategy concluded that each coastal
governorate should prepare its own ICZM plan, there
was neither discussion nor recommendations on how
these plans should be prepared and how they would be
integrated with each other (EEAA, 2009a, EEAA,
2009c, EEAA, 2009b).
Reviewing the local ICZM projects in both phases of
ICZM highlights that although there were two local
ICZM projects in the first phase, they did not
established any coordinating body to continue to
implement and follow up these projects (El-Raey,
1999, GEF, 2002). For instance, one of the main
problems that faced the CAMP and RSCMRM from
the beginning was the lack of integration of policies
among the various bodies in charge of different
sectors or geographic segments of the coast (El-Raey,
1999, World Bank, 2002, World Bank, 2003).
Moreover, there is no evidence that the CAMP project
team developed any mechanism to enhance integration
throughout the process of the project or afterwards
(Tortell, 2004). Furthermore, although the RSCMRM
established a local forum who met frequently, on a
monthly basis during the project preparation, once the
project was finished, the forum became inactive
(World Bank, 2002, World Bank, 2005).
Further to this, two of the second phase local ICZM
projects have not established any coordinating body to
continue to implement and follow up these projects. In