Why Coastlearn?

During a meeting in Split, Croatia, in summer 2000, 18 governmental representatives of the Baltic, Black, Mediterranean and Caspian Seas made a call for a distance vocational training tool to communicate ICZM information, experience, and ideas on a longer term basis. EUCC - The Coastal Union took responsibility for this request and the Leonardo Da Vinci funded pilot project “CoastLearn” began. Ever since then, the CoastLearn partnership and the CoastLearn programme have been growing under the leadership of the EUCC.

ICZM is not a widespread concept in the target countries. Therefore the main concern is to make the basic ICZM concepts and its benefits understandable to coastal managers and policy makers.

Coastlearn makes an original contribution to existing European and international vocational training systems and practices. Other ICM training courses are expensive, very much tailored to western European and US situations and problems and in most cases they are part of an academic education programme. CoastLearn has become the first widely available course that is available on the internet free of charge. The most original aspect of the CoastLearn approach is the co-operation between western European ICZM training experts and their colleagues in neighbouring (including accession) countries of the European Union to jointly develop new Coastlearn products whereby the needs of the non-EU partners are in the forefront of the project.