1    Begin with comprehensive scientific studies that combine theory, detailed knowledge, monitoring and modeling.

• The EPA bay program study presented the public and political leadership of the region with a solid, scientific foundation for decision making.  The information was comprehensive and multidisciplinary.  It identified clear linkages between land, water and living resources.  Since the release of the EPA report in 1983, highly sophisticated monitoring, modeling and targeted research have continued to play a central role in the formulation of policy in the region.  Admittedly, policy decisions are not always based on science.  But, if made available in an easily understood format, the chances are greatly improved that science will be integrated into the policy decision-making process.  Ongoing monitoring helps policymakers measure their progress, while modeling offers a useful tool to test the monitoring findings into the future.
• Transferability:  Comprehensive coastal management programs must be based on the best available science and technology.  This normally is found at research laboratories that are components of universities within the region.  Facilitated and meaningful exchange of information between the academic research and management communities is highly desirable.  As we move toward whole-ecosystem programs at the cutting edge of science and policy, it is essential.

2    Involve the highest levels of leadership possible.

• There is strength in leadership and accountability.  High-level and diverse political leadership is key.  The chairman of the Chesapeake Bay Commission, the governors of three states, the mayor of our nation's capital and the administrator of the U.S. EPA provide prominent leadership as members of the "Chesapeake Executive Council."  The council meets annually to adopt new policies and revitalize the public commitment to the cleanup.  Since the elected terms of these leaders vary, the program is never without continuity as elected officials enter and leave office.  Long-term stability is provided by the infrastructure of the program -- the agreements, the staffs of the agencies involved and the universities of the region.
• Transferability:  Jurisdictions vary and coastal ecosystems embrace many of them both within and between nations.  High-ranking political figures in each jurisdiction should be visibly involved in a coastal management program.  Only these officials have the authority to endorse and implement policies developed by the program infrastructure.

3    Embrace clear, strong, specific, comprehensive and measurable goals.

• A set of highly specific goals, many with deadlines, have been adopted that are unmatched nationwide.  These goals cover a comprehensive array of issues including water quality, living resources, growth management, public information and education, research and monitoring, and public access.  They include such specific goals as a tenfold increase in oysters by 2010 and striking the bay from the federal list of "impaired waters."  Reducing nutrients, sediments, chemical contaminants, air pollution and boat discharge are at the heart of the matter, as is pollution reduction in priority urban waters -- among the toughest to restore.  Water clarity that will meet the light requirements for sea grass is a central focus as is ensuring sufficient dissolved oxygen in the water to meet the living resources' life requirements.
• There are nearly a 100 commitments to be met in Chesapeake 2000.  Many are quantifiable, making progress measurable and keeping leaders accountable.  These goals last beyond the terms of the elected leaders and provide for continuity in the face of political change.
• Transferability:  The specific goals of the Chesapeake Bay Agreement may not necessarily be the best models for other coastal systems.  However, regardless of the restoration challenge, the process of setting mutually agreed upon goals is important.  The commitments should be realistic, but they should also challenge the programs to implement significant change.  In addition, they should form the basis for periodic re-evaluation of progress (lesson 11).

4    Encourage the participation of a broad spectrum of participants.

• Ecosystems like the Chesapeake's are extraordinarily complex.  Creating a framework to manage it had to involve a complex array of players representing all levels of government, the private sector, scientists and citizens.  Three governors, 40 members of Congress, hundreds of state legislators and local elected officials, 13 federal agencies, four interstate agencies, more than 700 citizen groups and hundreds of businesses all play a role in the restoration effort.  Together, these players bring immense political leadership and financial support to the program.
• The bay program has established more than 50 subcommittees and workgroups to ensure that all of these interests are represented and that the goals of the program are ultimately achieved.  Government employees work side by side with representatives of industry, local government, business and the public at large.  Strong communication strategies, frequent meetings and an inclusive process have become the signature of the program.
• Transferability:  Strong communication links can enable many to participate at minimal expense.  No matter how desirable broad-based involvement may be, a coastal program should not outgrow the ability of its participants to communicate.  Advances in electronic mail capabilities and access to the Internet now make this a lesson many more can learn.

5    Provide incentives and methods for institutional cooperation.

• In the bay region, the principal incentives are money and public pressure.  The active, financial involvement of EPA and other federal agencies has leveraged hundreds of millions of state and local dollars.  Cost share and technical assistance programs have been established to address a range of management issues and have allowed for much of the restoration effort to be voluntary in nature.  Regulatory programs that ensure protection of key resources have complemented these incentives.  An informed and active public has continued to provide positive pressures on elected officials to adopt strong policies and to maintain the federal and state funding for bay cleanup initiatives.
• Transferability:  Over two-thirds of the world's population live close to a coastal sea or great lake.  Behavioral change, such as the implementation of a phosphate detergent ban in the Chesapeake region, can have a huge multiplier effect.  Effective coastal management cannot reside solely with governmental agencies and nongovernmental organizations.  In addition to formal announcements and newsletters, nations can take advantage of their education infrastructure to teach ecological principles and environmental stewardship to the next generation of citizens.

6    Inform and involve the public.

• The citizenry of the bay region is remarkably knowledgeable.  While there is a naturally high public sentiment for saving the bay, some of the credit should go to the bay leaders' extensive education and technical assistance efforts.  Survey after survey reveals overwhelming public support for the restoration efforts and a growing understanding of concepts such as "watersheds" and "ecosystems."  Citizens are concerned and speak their minds about what they are willing to do to restore the Chesapeake Bay.  There is a wide diversity of opinion, but in the end most are supportive of at least baseline efforts.  The management of the bay involves complex political decisions.  Special interests add pressure to these decisions.  But in the end, an informed and vocal public has proven to be the policy maker's greatest ally.
• Transferability:  A balanced approach can be a consequence of strong involvement at the level of the local jurisdiction.  This is the basis of the new tributary strategies for the Chesapeake Bay.  In some cases, it may be possible to take advantage of strong local activities by integrating them into a larger coastal management program.  In others, as for the Chesapeake, the larger program came first and is now forming the context for local program development.

7    Develop a balanced set of management tools.

• In a program that spans the gamut form land-use policy to fisheries management to recreational boating to airborne toxics, a diversity of implementation tools has proven critical.  We have found that when managing an ecosystem, no on approach works best in all ecological, political and economic situations.  The bay program involves 20 agencies of the federal government, three states, the nation's capital, more than a thousand empowered local governments of markedly different orientations and citizens and scientists too numerous to count.  As a result, management tools range from legislative mandates to voluntary efforts.  Strong laws and regulations ensure effective pollution control and resource stewardship in the region while broad public education and technical assistance programs provide incentives.  For the restoration of the bay to work, approaches have had to vary greatly within the watershed.
•  Transferability:  No coastal management program will be successful if it exceeds available financial resources.  When choices must be made, combatting known sources of pollution must be the immediate goal.  Most programs begin with point sources -- improving wastewater treatment or regulating toxic discharges.  However, the phosphate detergent ban taught us that changing people's behavior has great amplification potential.  Progress in pollution control will engender support of more difficult and costly activities such as habitat restoration and wetland mitigation.

8    Choose pollution prevention before restoration or mitigation.

• Despite significant public and private investments in control technologies and management practices to reduce pollution from discharge pipes and land runoff, the Chesapeake Bay continues to have nutrient and toxic problems.  Once the pollution has entered the waterway or the habitat has been destroyed, it becomes technologically complex and expensive to restore.  In the bay region, the prevention of pollution at its source has repeatedly proven to be the preferred approach.  A ban on phosphate-containing laundry soaps instituted in the 1980s throughout the bay watershed, for example, has resulted in a nearly 40-percent reduction in phosphorus entering Chesapeake Bay from point sources.  This represents one of the largest single reductions of nutrients achieved since the bay program's inception.  Even more significant, it was achieved at no cost to government and little, if any, cost to the consumer.  The bay waters are cleaner and clothes continue to be bright and stain free.
• Transferability:    Unquestionably, the degradation and pollution of our environment has reach a global scale.  Regardless of the location, the full restoration of an ecosystem, once it is degraded, has proven complex, costly and usually impossible.  We must do more to develop ways to stop, or at least reduce, pollution at its source.  Businesses, universities, governments and citizens must join forces to identify new methods of preventing pollution.  Once they are identified, they must be shared regionally and globally.

9    Test scientific theories and management approaches on a small scale.

• For the past two decades, a number of scientific theories and pollution control technologies were comprehensively studied in smaller watersheds within the bay ecosystem.  The effectiveness of various point and nonpoint source controls and approaches to public involvement were evaluated.  In the bay region, testing research methodologies and pollution control strategies on a smaller scale, using demonstration or pilot projects, has led to increased success when these techniques have been applied more broadly.  These demonstration projects have helped to develop public confidence, attract support dollars and build the confidence of political leaders.
• Transferability:   In many cases, small-scale project testing can be melded with local jurisdiction program development.  This provides for the development of partnerships and encourages more participants to become vested in the demonstration project.

10    Focus on integration of government agencies.

• Despite the existence of theory, practice and tools that support the implementation of watershed-wide management, there remain practical obstacles to implementing the concept.  In the United States, the state natural resources agencies are often separate from the planning, budget or water management departments.  This separation of responsibility often leads to difficulties in integrating management efforts that cross agency lines.  As our knowledge of inter-relationships and connectedness of land, water and living resources grows, we periodically attempt to restructure our government agencies to better integrate the component parts.
• Achieving proper integration has proved problematic.  It challenges the boundaries of traditional resource management.  It requires the cooperation of diverse players whose educational, philosophical and professional orientations are often worlds apart.  It involves the constant communication and collaboration of multiple agencies at numerous levels of government.  It often crosses traditional areas of management; for example, forcing fisheries scientists to work with land planners, sewage treatment plant operators to coordinate with farmers, and so on.
• Transferability:  Our lesson in integration is equivalent to "harmonization" being practiced by many coastal programs, including those of the North Sea, Baltic Sea and Inland Sea of Japan.  Harmonization across agencies depends on the nature of governmental structure.  If we could broaden this lesson, we strongly recommend that a coastal program provide for the integration of management, science and citizen stewardship as a critical first step.

11    Conduct regular reassessments of goals and progress.

• A cornerstone of the Chesapeake Bay Program has been a constant commitment to reassess our goals, monitor the trends and measure our progress.  The health and vitality of the living resources serve as an important indicator of our success.  In addition, routine water quality monitoring and futuristic modeling help us to track progress in achieving our goals and plot the course for the future.  Periodically, these efforts reveal new information that, in turn, leads to improved ways of controlling pollution, managing fisheries, and restoring habitat.  Sometimes this means a shifting of the course -- a change in how we do things.  Politically, these changes are never easy.  We may have already informed the public that a problem was the result of a certain pesticide, only to later discover that it is caused by a nutrient instead.  We have found that, regardless of the commitments that have been made in the past or the information that has been released, it is always better to be straightforward with the findings.  The public has generally demonstrated an ability to alter course if new knowledge dictates a revised approach.  This dynamic approach to management has contributed to the integrity of the program.
• Transferability:  Periodic assessments should be undertaken in the context of program goals, and they should engage the participation of the full range of stakeholders.  It is equally important to maintain program flexibility that allows for, as a result of advances in research, changes in goals or the establishment of new ones.

12    Demonstrate and communicate results.

• The bay program was officially launched in 1983.  Since that time, its efforts have held the line on nitrogen and have achieved a 20-percent reduction in phosphorus in the Chesapeake Bay.  The outlook remains optimistic.  The program has, at the very least, stabilized pollution loads and is beginning to produce significant improvements in many of the bay's rivers.  It has achieved demonstrable gains in the way it manages land, provides fish passage, restores sea grasses, manages fisheries across state lines and bans the use of toxic chemicals known to have an impact on our ecosystem.
• Measuring progress and publicizing results has proven key to sustaining leadership commitment and public support.  Honesty, even when the findings are disheartening, is critical.  The frequent and open sharing of information -- whether good or bad -- has been essential to maintaining the trust and commitment of the stakeholders involved.
• Transferability:  While it is easy to view any environmental cleanup project pessimistically, in the Chesapeake we have made progress.  Some of that progress is witnessed by declining nutrient loads in spite of a growing population in the watershed.  Some is in the restoration of commercially important resources like the striped bass.  And some is in the increased environmental awareness on the part of the citizenry that many visitors to the region quickly observe.  Many coastal programs were instituted in response to a crisis:  toxics in marine mammals, red tides, oil spills, crashes in a fishery, to name a few.  Continuing citizen stewardship depends on making progress in the absence of crisis.

The Environmental Communique of the States, The Council of State Governments, Vol. 10, No. 1, Winter 2003.