THE ANTALYA DECLARATIONThis declaration is issued by more than 300 delegates from 50 countries who participated in the joint
international conference, MEDCOAST ’99/ EMECS ’99, Antalya, Turkey. The conference
represents the convergence of two perspectives for improving environmental management of coastal seas:
MEDCOAST , a regional initiative for the Mediterranean Sea and Black Seas, and EMECS , aglobal forum for policy makers, scientists, engineers, educators, and members of non-governmentalorganizations that is coordinated by the International EMECS Center, located in Kobe on the shoreof the Seto Inland Sea of Japan. The unifying conference theme was, ’Land-Ocean Interactions:Managing Coastal Systems’.
We begin our conclusions with an allegory:As the MEDCOAST and EMECS initiatives approach the end of their first decade, werecognize that we have crossed a familiar coastal landscape. We stand now overlooking a coast
where a vast new sea sparkles in the sun. Today we see only a little of this new coastalsea, but future generations will surely walk its shore, sail its waters and harvest its resources.

The familiar landscape is still well marked by traditional boundaries. There are the politicallines of local juridistictions, states and nations. Researchers continue to define ecologicaldifferences between river, bay, land and sea. Each of us has become comfortable in our
individual roles as biologist or hydrologist, engineer or manager, policy maker or citizen.
The new sea before us appears to be boundless. Automated monitoring techniques aregenerating large amounts of information, much of it in real time, that shows how the seachanges from day to day, month to month, year to year in response to changing land useand global climate trends. Satellite images are revealing how local coastal problems relate toregional sea processes and to those of the world ocean. Electronic communication is making
this wealth of new information available to everyone at the same time: researcher, political
official and concerned citizen alike. It is truly a seascape without familiar boundaries; itsnavigator is technology; day and night no longer dictate how clear we view its waters.
The participants in MEDCOAST '99/ EMECS '99 invite our regional and global colleagues to join
us in the task of building the best vessels possible to help our children and their children navigate
this new seascape and sustain the full potential of its resources. We will work together acrosstraditional boundaries and assume personal responsibility for achieving our goal, irrespectire of ournation, our discipline, or our role in life. We will meld old values into a new ethic that takes into
account the true contribution a clean and healthy coastal environment makes to our social andeconomic well being. Finally, we will use new information technology to provide to those whoteach our young people the products of our research, the fruits of our wisdom and the benefitsof our experiences.
We recommend that the following actions be undertaken by those who conduct national, regionalOF COASTAL SEAS
and international environmental programs, as well as by individual policy makers, engineers,scientists, and concerned citizens:
1.

Make every effort both to encourage and to improve communication between researchersand policy makers to ensure that environmental management of coastal seas is based on soundscientific information obtained by using the best technology available.

2.

Pursue an interdisciplinary approach that includes not only the natural sciences andengineering but also economics, law, ethics, and aesthetics as the bases of more effective
environmental policy, using coastal seas as excellent models for applying new remote sensing
technologies and dealing with the complex interaction between land , water, and humanendeavors.

3.

Give paramount importance to active and informed public participation making every effort
to inform citizens, directly and by working more closely with non‑governmental organizations,about what all people can do to improve their coastal waters and sustain their irreplaceableresources.

4.

Develop a new kind of environmental education for our young people, one that directly
involves their schools and available Internet resources, enabling the use of coastal seas dataand information to enrich curricula not only in science and mathematics but also in history,literature, and the arts.

5.

Recognize the urgency of restoring and conserving coastal environments by turning policy
into practice, realizing theory by taking action, sharing our knowledge and experiences insteadof keeping them to ourselves, and eliminating delay by moving now.

6.

Strengthen cooperation at local, national, and regional levels, recognizing that land‑sea
interactions transcend political boundaries and are part of the global ecosystem which we allshare.

We encourage governments and organizations that fund environmental programs to join thiscommitment by providing urgently needed resources, paying special attention to the protection
and restoration of coastal seas in developing regions. We recommend that such support be provided
to help all nations, including those of the Black Sea area, to become full participants in regionaland global initiatives for improved environmental management of the world's coastal seas.
Let us begin now!
Antalya, Turkey
12th November 1999