Until 2010 the EU Member States provided reports on the national implementation of the ICZM Recommendation, among them Lithuania and Germany (1). The EU Strategy on ICZM and the subsequent ICZM Recommendations caused a lot of activities all over Europe. Many stakeholder workshops took place, national strategies were developed and the awareness about problems in the coastal zone as well as ICZM as a concept to deal with these problems increased.

However, the problems in our coastal zones are not solved and the competition for space is increasing. The European Environmental Agency concludes that these multiple uses and resulting pressures cause serious and increasing problems for coastal habitats and ecosystems. Further, we have challenges like climate change that put additional pressure on the coastal zone. For example, climate change causes sea-level rise, increasing erosion and subsequently beaches are lost. Narrower beaches on one side meet an increasing demand for beaches because of growing tourism and an ongoing concentration of the population along the coast. This is called ‘coastal squeeze’, meaning less space is facing a higher demand for space.

ICZM was meant as a solution to deal with these coastal problems and it is still urgently needed. However, during the last years it has vanished from the national and European political agenda. What went wrong?

During Littoral 2012, Brian Shipman concluded that ICZM is slow in development and is losing ground to rivals, mainly Marine Spatial Planning. He stated that the status quo, how we manage our coasts is not an option and that we must reinvent ICZM so that it is more relevant, easy-to-use, interactive and essential (2). When Brian Shipman said so, he had in mind the Barcelona Convention with its Protocol on ICZM. In 2012, the action plan for the implementation of the Protocol 2012-2019 was adopted (3). It caused several activities around the Mediterranean. However, if we have a look back it did not reach a re-vitalization of ICZM and a move towards the suggested ICZM 2.0 in Europe, in general.

Despite all efforts, ICZM still suffers from weaknesses, e.g. insufficient political and legal status or the lack of a consistent and applicable process for practitioners and policy makers. Existing ICZM case studies often understand the term in a more general, broader sense without implementing major ideas in a convincing way. Concrete lessons learnt that can be transferred to other case studies and have relevance for ICZM in practice are still largely lacking.

However, the ideas of ICZM are widely accepted and aspects are included in most recent strategic and policy documents and directives. Most important in this respect is the EC-Directive on ‘establishing a framework for maritime spatial planning’ of 2014 (4). In the final version, the term ICZM was deleted from the title, but the directive kept major ICZM elements. “In order to take into account land-sea interactions …. Member States may use other formal or informal processes, such as integrated coastal management. The outcome shall be reflected by Member States in their maritime spatial plans.” (4).

But how shall ICZM look like in practice? Brian Shipman (2012) outlined the demand: ICZM has to be politically robust and legitimate, coherent in its outcomes and benefits and with a clear guidance of how to achieve them (2). Most important in this respect is the development of a systematic, stepwise, user-friendly approach that covers the entire ICZM cycle and enables scientists in cooperation with practitioners to deal with coastal problems and challenges.