landing places recalled by indigenous first peoples, remain remembered and
recorded.
The development demands and conservancy issues inland from the high-water
mark of the oceans and lakes are understood. It is when consideration is switched
in the other direction, toward the inter-tidal zone, and beyond that to the 12-
nautical-mile ‘coastal marine area’, that there arises human misunderstanding
about aqua-diversity and rights of access to a supposed resource common. In place
of the topsoil, bedrock and flora and fauna certainties of terrestrial management,
there arise ‘at sea’ the much less well understood biological complexities of the
marine environment. Here, over the last 200 years of farmland and urbanland cre-
ation in settler societies, the water-borne erosion of soils and clays, although
clearly apparent on the landward side at the time of development, has disap-
peared from sight under the water’s surface as a deathly silt cloak which lies on
the seabed in a manner now well understood, yet not perceived at the time of
deposit to be an interference to the marine ecology.
The waterland public resource estate is now guided by scientific indicators and
the application of resource use procedures, and a better understanding of the way
water movement patterns sometimes ‘dump’ and in other contexts ‘move on’
water-borne wastes and silt. It is a matter of relevance to coastal zone manage-
ment, widely considered, to identify and plan for scientifically correct and cul-
turally appropriate conservation with development, both inland and seaward.
There has been a century and more of bi-cultural complacency now going sour
(over-fishing, foreshore rights abuse), and multicultural conflict (confused
exploitation and conflicting enjoyment of the seaboard and marine resources). As
a consequence the governments of settler-society nations of the transpacific kind
are now attempting to impose an administrative authority to produce integrated
coastal policies and plans – in the style of Coastal Zone Management Plans
(CZMPs). These set out to achieve equilibrium between public and private rights
over the ‘subject to zoning’ landward estate, and the ‘subject to regulation’ marine
resources estate. In neither context do terrestrial local government authorities have
an easy time of it. More particularly, the visual impact of buildings has been his-
torically bereft of design direction and control; the subdivision of land up to the
legal freehold edge has been largely unstoppable; and the exploitation of marine
foodstocks and the out-of-sight-out-of-mind dumping of solid and water-borne
wastes has gone on largely unchecked and unabated.
So, although coastal control intentions are mostly admirable, they arise from
negative experiences and agency neglect. Unfortunately many of these adverse
practices are difficult to take away from individual site users and harvesters of
marine resources. Established ports policies, discharge practices, and fish-farming
projects are also difficult ‘resource common’ attitudes to thwart, issues on which
local and regional agencies seek ‘big picture’ guidance and bulletin style recom-
mendations from central government for ‘tipping the balance’.
One clear coastal zone management task is to improve the level of public
understanding about the littoral bio-zone and the levels of public awareness about
corporeal and customary property rights and responsibilities. This involves
Growth Pattern Management 165