The European Research Programmes in Coastal Engineering

Since 1989, the European Union has established a number of scientific programmes to promote and coordinate a wide range of activities such as transport, fisheries, environment, tourism, etc. which also have an impact on the coastal zone. The efforts of the European Commission to promote an overall concept of Integrated Coastal Zone Management (ICZM) encompass activities from the research carried out under the Marine Science and Technology programme (MAST) to the Environment and Climate programme (ENV)

Quo Vadimus – Future Prospects for the Earth’s Population : Comments on the worldwide situation concerning available energy and food sources, the consequences of climatic change, and available water resources

The problems of our earthly future have already been critically examined in the years 1972 and 1974 in reports to the “Club of Rome” by D. MEADOWS in “The Limits of Growth” and by Eduard PESTEL and M. MESAROVIC in “Mankind at the Turning Point”, and prognoses were given for the coming century. Nothing concerning those alarming results has changed substantially from then up to the present day. The frightening increase in the population of our earth, our limited energy and food sources, the climatic changes with all their resultant symptoms, the limited availability of water and increasing environmental pollution still remain the problems and dangers with which science and international politics must come to terms. This will be the case to an even greater extent in the future