Most of the world's population lives close to the coast and is highly
dependent on coastal resources, which are being exploited at
unsustainable rates. These resources are being subject to further
pressures associated with population increase and the globalization of
coastal resource demand. This is particularly so for the Asia-Pacific
region which contains almost two thirds of the world's population and
most of the world's coastal megacities. The region has globally
important atmospheric and oceanic phenomena, which affect world climate
such as the Asian Monsoon and the El-Niño Southern Oscillation
phenomena. The Asia-Pacific region also has highly significant marine
diversity but over the last few decades, coastal resources such as
mangroves, coral reefs and fisheries have experienced large-scale
depletion. The need to find appropriate management solutions to these
and other coastal issues is made more complex by the need to take
account of international scientific predictions for global climate
change and sea-level rise which will further impact on these coasts. The
idea for this book arose from a meeting of coastal scientists in Kobe,
Japan in May 2003. The meeting was organized by the Asia-Pacific Network
for Global Change Research (APN), an inter-governmental network,
comprising 21 member countries, for the promotion of global change
research and links between science and policy making in the region.
