10.5.3 Coastal and low lying areas

The response to sea-level rise could mean protection, accommodation and retreat. As substantial socio-economic activities and populations are currently highly concentrated in the coastal zones in Asia, protection should remain a key focus area in Asia. Coastal protection constructions in Asia for 5-year to 1,000-year storm-surge elevations need to be considered. Most megacities of Asia located in coastal zones need to ensure that future constructions are done at elevated levels (Nicholls, 2004; Nishioka and Harasawa, 1998; Du and Zhang, 2000). The dike heightening and strengthening has been identified as one of the adaptation measures for coastal protection (Du and Zhang, 2000; Huang and Xie, 2000; Li et al., 2004a, b).

Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) provides an effective coastal protection strategy to maximise the benefits provided by the coastal zone and to minimise the conflicts and harmful effects of activities on social, cultural and environmental resources to promote sustainable management of coastal zones (World Bank, 2002). The ICZM concept is being embraced as a central organising concept in the management of fisheries, coral reefs, pollution, megacities and individual coastal systems in China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Sri Lanka, Vietnam and Kuwait. It has been successfully applied for prevention and control of marine pollution in Batangas Bay of the Philippines and Xiamen of China over the past few years (Chua, 1999; Xue et al., 2004). The ICZM concept and principle could potentially promote sustainable coastal area protection and management in other countries of Asia.