European Action Plan for strengthening the knowledge
base of sustainable coastal and marine management
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

The Action Plan addresses major shortcomings in knowledge and technology that presently hamper the implementation of sustainable coastal and marine management.
It provides a reference base for future coastal and marine research investments in Europe and contributes to focusing these research efforts.
The Action Plan was established at the Paris Conference of 5-7 December 2007, organised by the European Network for Coastal Research, ENCORA. The research directions set forth in the Aberdeen Declaration were an important starting point.

Hundred-eighty experts in different disciplines, invited for their outstanding expertise, submitted their personal ideas on critical knowledge gaps before the conference. These ideas were discussed in ten parallel workshops, each targeted at a specific aspect of coastal and marine management. Quite remarkably, many workshops had an outcome with a common denominator,  European Action Plan (71.6 kB).