Like others before it, the tidal power proposal eventually died. Yet once again, new proposals have surfaced, just as they have every 20 years or so since the early 1900s. Elsewhere in the Bay of Fundy, a mega-quarry proposal is undergoing environmental review in Digby Neck, Nova Scotia. Directly across the water, in Passamoquoddy Bay, LNG proposals that involve a Canadian navigation route have driven a huge wedge between coastal communities.

It appears we live in urgent times. Given his decades of experience in the arena of coastal management, I recently talked with Hildebrand, who now heads the Sustainable Communities & Ecosystems Division for Environment Canada's Atlantic Office. In recent years, he's traveled throughout North America and other parts of the world teaching and training students and coastal managers about the process of sound coastal policy and development. Hildebrand is involved in shaping the management plans for the Bras d'Or Lakes in Cape Breton and the Eastern Scotian Shelf off Nova Scotia.

I began by asking him: Are we better prepared to handle development pressures in the Bay of Fundy?

“We're certainly better prepared than we were 30 years ago, but not to the fullest extent that we need to be,” he said. “The problem is, we're caught in a cycle of just reacting. A development comes along, like an LNG, and we go ‘oh dear, got to get the data together, start a campaign, find out who’s against it and who’s for it.’ Instead, we need to look at these projects in advance of them coming along and decide, for instance, that for the Bay of Fundy, given its natural capital, its uses and the vision we have for it, would LNG tankers coming through be appropriate or not?

“And that’s not for one group to say,” he continued. “It needs to be a collective decision among government, researchers and the community and we're simply not there yet. It’s really hard in coastal and ocean management to get people to pay attention when there isn't a crisis or obvious problem. Yet that’s the best time to do the planning.”

Research in the Minas Basin being done though the Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership is a good start in moving toward a coastal management plan for the Bay, he said. As is New Brunswick’s coastal policy, which sections coastal areas into zones of varying restrictions. “We don’t have a comprehensive package in place, but the will is there and we are working toward it.”
In addition, Hildebrand points to community-based initiatives around the Bay, like the Atlantic Coastal Action Programs (ACAP), as major contributors to the management process through their years of monitoring and reporting coastal and watershed conditions. The program now has 14 sites throughout Atlantic Canada, four of them in the Bay of Fundy. While Environment Canada gives technical and expert advice and some financing to each site, for the most part, ACAPs chart their own course and raise funding from other government, nonprofit and private sources. Hildebrand, one of the founders and the government lead for ACAP through Environment Canada, says the programs were designed to be community-driven and financially self-sustaining, which is the reason for their longevity and success. “These programs have to be owned at the local level,” otherwise they’ll fade away, he said.

The ACAP experience is one Hildebrand shares with coastal managers in Canada and worldwide. After the Asian Tsunami occurred on December 26, 2004, Hildebrand, as part of the Canadian Tsunami Response Task Force, spent two weeks working in the heavily affected areas of Thailand consulting with government officials and urging them to develop community-based programs to help realize “sustainable re-development of the coastal zone.” Hildebrand is also helping to develop a Master of Marine Management program at the University of the Republic in Uruguay, with a component that will pair ACAP communities with communities along the Río de la Plata. Similar arrangements are operating in Russia and other countries.

For years, he has trained and taught coastal managers in North America, China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Cuba, Mexico, Sweden and other countries about the principles of integrated coastal and ocean management, or ICOM, a central organizing concept that uses a mix of strategies tailored to the ecological, social and economic conditions operating in the place that is being managed. The end result is an ecosystem-based approach to conservation and sustainable development of coastal com-munities.

Hildebrand, who also evaluates ICOM programs, says building a lasting momentum and putting theory into practice is far from easy. “Unfortunately, there is great inertia in changing traditional patterns of behavior and it often takes a disaster and significant loss to wake people and governments up to take action,” he said.

In 2004, he evaluated the second phase of a 10-year United Nations Development Program for the barrier reef complex in Belize. “For the first five years it was a great program that included strengthening a network of marine protected areas, implementing a manatee conservation program, undertaking broad public education components, government collaboration - all the great things.” His investigation of the second phase, however, showed a project rife with corruption and mismanagement. The initiative crashed on July 31, 2004, once the donor money dried up.

“This happens over and over; there's this ‘project’ mentality, not a ‘program’ mentality,” Hildebrand said. “The government made no commitment to picking up the ball and running the program when donor support ended. Mid-term evaluations went well; they had consultants and workshops on financial sustainability, how to keep the project going after the money ends. But none of it was implemented. Not a single piece.”

For any coastal program to work, he added, “You have to diversify your funding sources and your partnerships, and be thinking in the long-term. If you're dependent on one or only a couple of sources, you’re going to go down eventually.”

He believes that building lasting partnerships is also essential and cites the Gulf of Maine program, supported by the Gulf of Maine Council, as a good example of collaboration between regional and international governments.

“Even in our maps we’ve never drawn a political boundary,” Hildebrand, who has served on the Council’s working group for 15 years, said. “We’ve had to come to understand each other, to build a rapport and trust among the players and move beyond our little boxes to think about this place called the Gulf of Maine. Anything that we do needs to go beyond jurisdiction, so there’s that regional approach. One of the nice things is that we do talk and compare notes. And when you start comparing notes, it brings some subtle pressure to bear among regional colleagues.”

For example, “The three states have strong coastal management programs. And New Brunswick has brought forth its coastal policy with pride. Nova Scotia is now turning its attention to coastal zone management as well.”
Whether it’s building support for a coastal management plan in Nova Scotia or for the entire Bay of Fundy, Hildebrand’s experience has taught him that it has to begin with a coalition of voices.

“Building this advocacy across a broad group of people is very powerful,” he said. “When this happens successfully, the on-the-ground programs, like ACAPs or other coastal watershed groups, start tackling it and dealing with the issues. From there it brings partners together and you can start building and doing practical, tangible things. Government can play a complementary role on the legislative, financial, policy and technical levels - doing the things we’re supposed to do in supporting these community-based efforts. It’s a top-down and bottom-up approach. But if we're going to invest in this, it’s got to start at the community level.”

© 2006 The Gulf of Maine Times