How complex and laborious it can be to reconcile opposing positions and achieve sustainable use of a coastal area is exemplified by the North West European Wadden Sea, which was granted World Natural Heritage status by UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) in 2009. This area of tidal mudflats, the world’s largest, is around 500 kilometres long and extends across large parts of the Dutch, German and Danish North Sea coasts. Today, with its World Natural Heritage status, it is recognized internationally as an ecological region of special aesthetic quality and of particular significance as a breeding ground for the fish of the North Sea and millions of breeding and resting birds. ­Several million holidaymakers currently visit this region every year.
It took almost 50 years for protected status to be achieved. Interestingly, this was accomplished despite the fact that each of the coastal states pursued the protection of this transboundary ecological region through their own national legislation rather than through trilateral treaties. Moreover, this example shows that initial resistance can be overcome, in this case thanks mainly to the enduring commitment of individual protagonists and nature conservation organizations over many years.
A severe storm surge affected the Netherlands in 1953 and Ger­many in 1962. In both cases, the dikes along the North Sea coast were breached in many places. Some 1800 people died in the Netherlands in 1953 and more than 300 in Germany in 1962. In the following years, dikes were reinforced in many places and the shorelines straightened by damming bays. In the Netherlands and Germany there was also discussion of large-scale solutions – constructing dikes around major areas of the Wadden Sea. The intention behind this was not merely to protect the land from further floods; additional plans were made to put the newly reclaimed land areas to industrial and agricultural uses. In the 1960s the Wadden Sea was considered by all three countries as a backward region that required economic development. To this end, initially a series of nuclear power stations was to be constructed in the enclosed areas, which would then be likely to attract other industrial enterprises. The construction of an airport was also proposed.

fig. 4.7 > In 1972 fishers in the Netherlands protested against the damming of the Eastern Scheldt estuary.

The first critiques of these plans were voiced in 1965 in the Netherlands where activists published letters of protest in the daily press. Out of this solitary act of resistance, the first nature conservation organization came into being that was dedicated wholly to the protection of the Wadden Sea, the Landelijke Vereniging tot Behoud van de Waddenzee (Association for protection of the Wadden Sea). At about the same time, the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences had commissioned a group of younger scientists with a first systematic survey of data on the Wadden Sea’s ecology. Although the significance of the habitat for fish breeding and bird life was known, very little else about the ecosystem was understood. Strong advocates from the scientific world thus stood shoulder to shoulder with nature conservationists. Even then, the scientists were emphasising the significance of the Wadden Sea as a transboundary habitat which needed to be protected by means of interna­tional agreements. In Germany, too, the first groups emerged in the 1960s, cooperated with their Dutch partners and were very early in calling for the establishment of a Wadden Sea National Park. But little notice was taken of them at the time. In Denmark, on the other hand, there was no lobby worth mentioning at first, which was partly due to the fact that the Wadden Sea only accounted for a relatively small ­proportion of the total coastline of around 7000 kilometres and its importance was barely perceived.
The fact that in the following years the Wadden Sea still came to be perceived as an ecological region of transnational importance was due to the adoption of the international Ramsar Convention for the protection of wetlands such as peatlands, marshes, salt meadows, swamps and tidal mudflats. It had been drafted at the instigation of UNESCO and the non-governmental IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) and was adopted on 2 February 1971 in the Iranian city of Ramsar. Although the Convention was not binding in international law, it did engender a signal effect. Most wetlands until then had been treated as a land reserved for future economic use. The Convention for the first time officially underscored on the policy level the international importance of wetlands, especially for waterfowl and migratory birds.
In 1974, the new left-wing liberal government of the Netherlands abandoned most of the construction and economic projects planned for the Wadden Sea in the previous years, and the nature conservation organizations never tired of proclaiming the Wadden Sea’s importance as an ecological region, particularly for the population at large. In Germany, meanwhile, nature conservation associations set up information centres along the North Sea coast in which tourists were informed about the ecology of the Wadden Sea by means of talks and guided tours of the tidal mudflats. But politically there was no letting go of the idea of making industrial and agricultural use of the Wadden Sea and strengthening coastal protection by means of dike construction.
Anfang der 1980er-Jahre schließlich begann sich die umweltpolitische Gesamtsituation in Europa deutlich zu ändern. Angesichts der Verschmutzung durch die Verklappung von Industrieabfällen und die starken Schmutzfrachten in den Flüssen Rhein, Elbe, Humber und Themse wurde die Nordsee und mit ihr das Wattenmeer immer stärker als bedrohter Lebensraum wahrgenommen. Dies spiegelte sich auch in der intensiven Medienberichterstattung zu dem Thema wider.
In Denmark at this time, Danish researchers also started to advocate protection of the habitat in their country.
Finally, in the early 1980s, the overall environmental policy situa­tion in Europe began to undergo a distinct change. In view of pollution due to the discharge of industrial wastes and the high effluent loads in the rivers Rhine, Elbe, Humber and Thames, there was a growing ­perception of the North Sea, and the Wadden Sea along with it, as ­threatened habitat. This was also reflected in the intensive media ­reporting on the theme.
In Germany the issue of North Sea pollution definitively reached the top of the political agenda in 1980 after the German Advisory Council on the Environment had published an alarming report about the worrying condition of the North Sea and marine pollution generally. In the Netherlands, the conservation of the Wadden Sea ecological region was now integrated into an overall regional-planning concept as a government policy objective. The Dutch government took this step to try and strengthen trilateral cooperation, stressing the significance of the “indivisibility of the international tidal mudflats region”. It sought to codify a statute for the Wadden Sea region which should transcend national borders and regulate common administrative objectives and cooperation with Denmark and Germany.
Closer cooperation with the neighbouring countries Germany and Denmark did not initially come about, however, because these countries wanted to continue managing the Wadden Sea according to their own rules. Furthermore, the idea of the Wadden Sea as a unified ecological region collided with the prevailing attitude in Denmark and Germany of unrestrained national sovereignty in their own territorial waters. In 1982 the three countries signed the Joint Declaration, a trilateral declaration of intent, but it was not binding: for example, Denmark retained the right to continue hunting seals in the Danish Wadden Sea while the Netherlands resolved to protect them.
Nevertheless, progress began to be made from the mid-1980s. The Netherlands decided to protect areas of its Wadden Sea by barring them from agricultural, industrial or tourist uses or designating them as protected natural areas. Germany, on the other hand, embraced the idea of national parks, which had been discussed repeatedly since the 1970s and which have the highest protection status that can be conferred on an ecological region in Germany. Since the decision to establish a national park is a regional government matter, three German federal states designated three different national parks in succession – in the state of Schleswig-Holstein in 1985, in Lower Saxony in 1986, and a small section belonging to the city of Hamburg and located in the Elbe estuary in 1990. That did not amount to a solution to all problems, however. Schleswig-Holstein was the main focus of criticism. The nature conservation organizations complained that oil drilling had been approved in the direct vicinity of the national park boundary. Furthermore, bird ­hunting as well as mussel fishery continued to be allowed on a limited scale. Denmark, for its part, did not initially consider it necessary to protect the Wadden Sea in its entirety. The establishment of a large-scale protected area would have entailed a prohibition on hunting for waterfowl or seals, for example.

fig. 4.8 > In 1985 the Wadden Sea in Schleswig-Holstein was declared a national park. Despite this there was strong criticism to begin with because controversial coastal protection measures were still being carried out, such as the locking of the Nordstrand Bight with a dike formed from sand using hydraulic filling.

A strengthening and internationalization of cooperation was only achieved at the renewed initiative of nature conservation associations from the three coastal countries. At their urging, the trilateral Wadden Sea Secretariat in Wilhelmshaven was finally founded in 1987. Over the years it has succeeded in establishing itself as a coordinating body that acts in a policy advisory capacity. Today it is financed jointly by all three countries. It coordinates research, public relations work and environmental monitoring programmes – for example, the control of invasive species – and organizes Trilateral Wadden Sea Conferences which take place every three to five years.
In the view of experts, it would be wrong to talk about an ideal integrated coastal zone management programme in relation to the Wadden Sea because of the divergent national regulations that apply. So far that has remained a goal for the future. While the existence of the Wadden Sea Secretariat means that a state-supported organization exists and the recognition as a World Natural Heritage site by UNESCO has further advanced the perception of the Wadden Sea as a transnational entity, there are no legally binding standards of any kind attached to this status. However, World Natural Heritage status has international charisma and finally induced Denmark, whose tidal mudflats were not initially included in the World Natural Heritage listing, to designate them as a national park. Having been brought up to the same protection status as had been achieved in Germany, in 2014 the Danish section of the Wadden Sea was then accordingly recognized as World Natural Heritage.

fig. 4.9 > Although the Wadden Sea in its entirety is a World Natural Heritage site, the responsibilities for this habitat are distributed among several countries. The area extends across three nations and is administered by a variety of regional authorities within these states.