Coastal research and policy integration in northwest Europe. The COREPOINT project

The COREPOINT (Coastal REsearch and POlicy INTegration) project aimed to advance integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) in northwest Europe through a network of local authorities, research organisations and NGOs. It involved 12 partners from Ireland, the United Kingdom, France, Netherlands and Belgium. The project enabled a comparison of approaches to ICZM at the northwest Europe scale and a series of workshops was hosted to promote the principles contained in the European Union's recommendation on ICZM. At the local level, linkages were formed between research organisations and coastal management practitioners in local authorities in an attempt to bridge the science-management divide. This special edition contains several papers that deal with different facets of the project's results. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.