Websites are listed in the integrated section of coastalmanagement.com if the site describes a coastal management program that brings together disparate elements in an attempt to holistically manage coastal resources. In this sense, an Integrated Coastal Management program encompasses a broad constituency of coastal programs with varying degrees of integration, following the meaning of an integration used by Cicin-Sain (1993), and adopted by Kay and Alder (2005). Thus, coastal programs which aim to coordinate, bring together, harmonize and reduce fragmentation are deemed to be 'integrated' programs (with clearly different degrees of integration).

Websites that meet this test of integration include:

• Government coastal program sites which outline national, regional/provincial or local government attempts to better coordinate their efforts in coastal management.
• Super-national (international) organizations with programs to promote and/or fund integrated coastal programs among its members, be they national or sub-national governments or communities.
• Non-governmental organizations working on local or community-based coastal management.
• Industry or trade groups with programs to promote and/or fund integrated coastal programs among its members.

As such, Websites which do not meet the criteria include:

• Education programs teaching or promoting ICM.
• Research programs on ICM.
• ICM consultancy companies.
• Sites describing individual sectors within ICM (such as fisheries, conservation, oil & gas, ports).

Clearly, there are areas of gray in determining if a site is describing an ICM program or not. In such cases, choice is at the discretion of the coastalmanagement.com team. However, given that the outcome of whether to tag a site as ICM or not is shown on the site, there is scope for comment, lobbying or objection from visitors to coastalmanagement.com, including those 'owning' a website.

Finally, there are some further practical choice considerations. Only one Website for a particular unit of Government, is tagged as ICM. Although it may be argued that a Government can develop more than one program which promotes ICM, by definition there must always be one Website that is the 'peak' integrator, bringing together all other ICM Websites within a particular level of Government. So, for governments with active ICM programs (most notably the USA Federal Government), only one site is tagged as ICM. The exception to this rule is where two levels of Government are working with each other, or with the community on a defined geographic area (such as San Francisco Bay or the Great Barrier Reef).

The concepts of integrated coastal management internet sites was stimulated by research for a paper on the Internet and coastal management by Robert Kay (Coastal Zone Management Pty Ltd, Australia) and Patrick Christie (University of Washington). The results of this research were published in the international journal Coastal Management: 29 pp. 157-181. The paper can be downloaded from here.

The number of ICM web sites at a global and regional level is regularly updated.

Monthly additions and deletions to ICM tags are also listed each month, so that the evolution of ICM Websites can be tracked. This information will be included in each month's icoast newsletter.

The geographical divisions are based on World Bank regions.

The languages used on each Website are also shown. The three-letter codes for each language are adapted from the Ethnologue (Grimes,1999).

	English
	Dutch
	Japanese
	Spanish
Multiple Language

References

Cicin-Sain, B. (1993). Sustainable Development and Integrated Coastal Zone Management. Ocean & Coastal Management 21: 11-44.

Grimes, B.F (1999) ETHNOLOGUE: Languages of the World (Thirteenth Edition) SIL International, Dallas, Texas

Kay, R. C. and A. J. (2005). Coastal Planning and Management (2nd Edition). London, Routledge. 375p