ASSESSMENT OF COASTAL AREA USES OF ORDU PROVINCE WITH AN INTEGRATED COASTAL AREAS PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

Coastal regions with their natural, social, cultural and economic potentials have become the mostly preferred places and consequently such places have become the centre of intense human activities. Rapidly increasing population and public right to use coasts gradually increased the pressures exerted over those coastal regions. Then, the limited resource, the coasts, destroyed in time and started to lose their natural assets. Integrated coastal management plans have been implemented in Turkey to bring a new perspective in coastal planning and implementation works, to provide compatible and balanced preservation of coastal regions and decision-making process considering entire sectors. These plans are expected to be a tool to meet the international obligations, to orient local expectations and demands, to arrange conflicting responsibilities over coastal regions and to provide a balance between economic development and environmental health. Along with these objectives, integrated coastal management plans were prepared for Sinop, Samsun, Trabzon, Art-yin and Rize provinces along the Blak Sea coastal line, but there are not any works done for Ordu province. In this study, current status of coastal sections of Ordu province was assessed and zoning decisions and strategy recommendations were provided along with the principles of integrated coastal management planning.