Sustainable COASTal RECreation – the role and potential of voluntary organizations and civic engagement in coastal areas under pressure

The project is divided into five work packages. The first phase of the project has been dedicated to gathering empirical data in all work packages. Fieldwork has been conducted in the Oslo Fjord (Færder and Larvik municipalities), as well as along the Kullaleden trail in Skåne, Sweden, and the North Coast Trail in North Zealand, Denmark. The project has awarded two master's scholarships, one at NMBU and one at the University of Copenhagen. The project participated in the IOERC, International Outdoor Education Research Conference, Tokyo, Japan. Marianne Singsaas presented the paper Governing Access to Outdoor Recreation Spaces in Urban Coastal Areas Under Pressure. A Comparison of Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish Planning Practices. The project was also present at an event at the Oslofjord Museum, an open public meeting about coastal zone management in Asker. Espen Sjaastad from NMBU gave a presentation related to work package 3.

COASTREC is a comprehensive study of the role and potential of voluntary organizations and civic engagement for sustainability in policies, plans, and governance of coastal areas under pressure. Through empirical studies of civil society initiatives promoting sustainable coastal recreation, the proposed project will answer both prioritized areas in the call, through (1) investigating the pressures and possible solutions to sustainability challenges in coastal areas; and (2) investigating and understanding how sustainability shifts are shaped by cultural and political processes, economic interests, power structures, legislation, planning, and regulation. COASTREC responds to the societal need for knowledge on what factors promote or hinder sustainability shifts; -the how-to? focusing on the role of culture and multi-level governance. The project will investigate the role and agency of civil society, supporting, complementing, or opposing state policies for environmental governance. We ask how state policy formulation and implementation translate into a multi-level, -sector and -actor system and how this can be governed, and how civil society initiatives navigate through the same systems and influence and potentially change state policy. This will be done through close collaboration between networks of practitioners, voluntary organizations, policymakers, and Nordic researchers, supported by an international expert group. COASTREC will support Norway’s first comprehensive Action Plan for the Oslo fjord aiming to improve environmental qualities, reduce pressures on coastal areas, and aid the pursuit of equitable and sustainable coastal recreation. The project's axis is the SDG 17 Partnership for the goals, and the project explores the role of this goal in depth in enabling sustainability shifts.