Around the introduction of Agenda 21 at Rio in 1991, some countries like the Netherlands and New Zealand were already leading the way with quite innovative approaches to environmental planning. Focusing on the New Zealand government's innovations in sustainable and environmental planning, particularly the Resource Management Act of 1991, this book highlights planning and governance under devolved and co-operative mandates. It uses multiple methods to evaluate the quality of policy statements and district plans prepared by regional and local councils respectively, as well as the various inter- and intra-organizational and institutional factors affecting them. It also analyses the quality of the plans' implementation through the consensus or permits process, and the quality of the environmental outcomes.

The book presents an overview and historic perspectives of a novel scientific field coming of age today: coastal and ocean management. It covers diverse and changing issues, ranging from conflict resolution to governance and ethical-political imperatives, natural disasters and climate change, culminating in coastal and ocean typologies, the basis for a future theory of coasts and oceans. Eighteen chapters, written by two main authors in cooperation with international experts, review 25 years of research. The authors address challenges to society related to global change issues that have been generated by human activity in both temperate (Sweden, Germany and the United States) and tropical regions (Brazil, Indonesia). Ultimately, the book documents the maturation of a field and responds to changing societal needs and scientific outlooks. It gathers recent analyses along with important earlier research, with a foreword by Biliana Cicin-Sain and Richard Delaney, globally renowned as coastal and ocean experts in theory and practice. Its broad approach makes the book a must-read for graduate and postgraduate students, as well as coastal management and marine spatial planning practitioners, and for researchers in the fields of geography, anthropology, history of science, human and social ecology, and environmental and development studies.