Developing capacity for coastal management in the absence of the government: a case study in the Dominican Republic

Integrated coastal management should ideally be a government-driven process linking private-sector forces with public resources and voluntary action by NGOs and local communities in an effort to establish and implement mutually agreed upon policy. Perceptions of problems, and the capacity for any of these elements of society to participate in the management process, are critical factors which will influence which management issues are identified, the scale and the scope of a management plan and its implementation. This paper presents a case study of an NGO-driven effort to build capacity and begin implementing effective collaborative coastal management in the Samanل bay region of the Dominican Republic. A participatory and consensus-building planning process was used to identify priority problems and strategies for solving them. Strategies were discussed jointly by local community and user groups, then combined into a preliminary regional management plan. To help the process endure and become more integrated an iterative and cyclical management approach will need to be adopted. It is uncertain whether the lack of government involvement hindered this community-based effort; however, the governmentʹs active involvement will be essential in the near future as the effort expands.