Interagency Collaboration for Integrated Coastal Zone Management: A Bangladesh Case Study

Protection, conservation, and development of coastal resources of Bangladesh are being pursued by a number of agencies on narrowly defined subject-matter specialization like agriculture and fisheries. Coastal resources, however, have competitive uses and need to be approached holistically. A Program Development Office set up to start the preparatory work for an ICZM program commissioned an institutional review of 15 agencies most intimately connected with activities in the coastal area to assess their institutional capacity to take part in an ICZM program. The actual performance of one of the top-ranked organizations under review was further evaluated by drawing upon case materials from five completed multisector projects in which it was the lead agency. The case study revealed that institutional capacity was a necessary but not a sufficient condition for successful joint execution of multisector programs. Organizations tend to cooperate in a multisector program only when they are given full control over the management of their own components. Any arrangements short of that will not yield the desired result. An integrated approach needs to be formalized in a manner that allows each agency to maintain its independent status while at the same time allowing it to carry out its activities within a commonly agreed framework. This model contains the elements of an institutional design for carrying out an integrated coastal zone management program in Bangladesh.