Decision Making for Sustainable Use and Development - Coastal Lagoons: Ecosystem Processes and Modeling for Sustainable Use and Development - page 356

Decision making must be recognized as an ongoing process. Decisions that affect
the lagoon area will be made continually. The important need and goal should be
to develop a process and plan that provide for informed decisions by the many
different socio-economic units that will be making decisions in this area. This is
why an integrated, multidisciplinary plan is necessary. A plan that involves as many
of the decision-making entities as possible will increase effectiveness, consistency,
and integration into the community. Decisions will continue to be made and the
process should incorporate additional information and tools through regular evalu-
ation of the existing conditions.
Once the need for sustainable management has been identified and the lagoon
system components defined, the next step is to develop an integrated lagoon
management plan that will provide spatial and temporal guidance. Sustainability
implies long-term commitment to the effort as well as providing a healthy system
for future generations. Integrated means that the plan's goals, objectives, and tasks
need to be incorporated into the many existing programs, structures, and entities
that affect the lagoon system. The ideal result should be that each socio-economic
entity, including individual citizens, industry, and other stakeholder groups, con-
siders its impacts and demands on the lagoon and the limited capacity of the
lagoon to provide for these demands on a daily operational basis.
Each government and nongovernment, public, or private entity or stakeholder
in the lagoon system needs to adopt and integrate the ILSMP into its daily operations,
administrative and financial accounting, and employment operations. All should be
tasked with developing new approaches with creative incentives to make quantifiable
progress toward the sustainable management of the system of which they are an
integral part. The repetition of this integration process, recurring throughout the
lagoon area and its daily functioning parts and participants, will eventually reach
and permeate most aspects of the collective community to reinforce the philosophy
of sustainability. Integrating the concept into the community's school system will
provide for education of the next generation toward the adoption and maintenance
of commitment over the long term.
The planning process can be simplified by describing it in several steps or
components listed below and as depicted in Figure 8.1.

1. Set the goal—sustainable management of the lagoon

2. Define the problem—the problems/conditions that manifest the lagoon

ecological and socio-economic systems imbalance (see Section 8.2)

3. Define the system—the lagoon's ecological and socio-economic structure

and components ( see Chapter 2)

4. Develop an effective DSS (see Section 8.1)

5. Use the best data and tools (see Section 8.4)

6. Develop and integrate this plan into infrastructure by function (see Sections

8.5 and 8.6)

7. Evaluate progress on a regular basis (see Section 8.10)

The planning process is used by most governmental and nongovernmental units
as a means to set and accomplish goals. It results in a product that is only as effective
as its accountability of implementation and evaluation. Recent programs, such as