Cultural heritage

Cultural heritage in coastal zones

This article gives an overview on special issues connected to Cultural Heritage in the context of integrated coastal zone management

Introduction and overview

Coastal zones are an important element of Europe’s cultural history, as the history of most European and global societies is closely connected with interactions between land and sea and across seas. Consequently, many buildings, port structures and production plants, further to shipwrecks and submerged artefacts are concentrated in coastal areas. They represent a cultural heritage which, in a prospective of sustainable and integrated coastal development, represents a cultural endowment which should be handed down to future . Further to this ethic imperative, cultural heritage has a potential of contributing to economic development, enhancing, if properly managed, the local potentials for attracting quality tourism in an area. The protection of this heritage represents a special challenge in the context of coastal zones, where pressures on land use are high, as economic interests connected to the conservation are frequently not developed, and the ethic imperative in favor of future's generations rights only rarely has a political voice in coastal management processes.

This contributions gives an overview on

• Definition of Cultural Heritage
• Legal aspects (TBC)
• Main specificities of cultural heritage in coastal zones
• Principal challenges for their conservation
• Options for management
• Some examples

This article does not deal with specific, mainly legal issues connected to underwater heritage and archeology, which should be treated in a separate page.