Land Use Policy

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Florina, Greece b. Department of Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment, School of Agriculture, University of Thessaly, Fytoko Street, 38446 Volos, Greece c.
Land Use Policy 38 (2014) 41–47

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Land Use Policy journal homepage:www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

Sustainable development of rural coastal areas: Impacts of a new fisheries policy a

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Efstratios Loizou , Fotios Chatzitheodoridis , Konstadinos Polymeros , c, c Anastasios Michailidis ∗ , Konstadinos Mattas a

Department of Agricultural Products Marketing and Quality Control, Technological Educational Institute of Western Macedonia, Terma Kontopoulou, 53100 Florina, Greece b Department of Ichthyology and Aquatic Environment, School of Agriculture, University of Thessaly, Fytoko Street, 38446 Volos, Greece c Department of Agricultural Economics, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, P.O. Box 225, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece

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Article history: Received 5 June 2013 Received in revised form 16 October 2013 Accepted 22 October 2013 Keywords: Rural coastal areas New fisheries policy approach Impact analysis Regional input–output modeling

abstract In most EU coastal areas, over the last two decades, a significant employment and income shrink was observed; this was attributed to a gradual decline of fishery activities. Hence, the EU, in an attempt to restrain this decline and to safeguard a sustainable development of the coastal areas, initiated new measures within the current (2007–2013) Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). This work attempts to assess the effectiveness of this new policy, Axis 4 of the Operational Fisheries Programme, by measuring the employment and income effects upon the whole economy. The analysis was applied in a Greek coastal area as a case study. Results demonstrate that the employment and income generated, due to those measures, are relatively small mainly because of fund limitations and weak interactions in the local economy in a short-run timeline, though indirect benefits could occur in the long run. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction Greece’s long coastline (13,780 km), representing around 16% of Europe’s coastline (EEA, 2006), and numerous islands, offers a unique and characteristic case where features of the coastal, rural and urban areas can all be met and studied. Development and management of coastal areas have always attracted research interest (Sorensen, 1997; Koutrakis et al., 2010, 2003; Williams et al., 2006), since coastal rural areas, besides the problems met in rural areas (EEA, 2006; MRDF, 2009), face additional development impediments (isolation, no transportation, seasonality in major activities). Thus, fishery activities can offer an opportunity to enhance the region’s growth, offering a permanent income source to local people and supporting accompanied activ-ities (MRDF, 2009; Pita et al., 2010). Nevertheless, over the last years in most Mediterranean coastal areas, a significant decline in fishery activities was recorded, hampering the whole EU rural development effort. Thus, the Operational Fisheries Programme (OFP), initiated by the EU Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), can offer great prospects in terms of revitalizing and supporting the develop-ment of coastal areas, following comparable initiatives as Common Agricultural Policy (Tzanopoulos et al., 2011; Papadopoulou et al., 2011).

∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +30 2310998783; fax: +30 2310998828; mobile: +30 6977353858. E-mail address: [email protected] (A. Michailidis). 0264-8377/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2013.10.017 E. Loizou et al. / Land Use Policy 38 (2014) 41–47

Greece’s coastal areas are expected to receive D 274 million in funds from all five axes of the OFP for the period 2007–2013. Thus, the primary objective of the present analysis is to examine the performance of the whole program and its ability to promote social and economic development in the eligible areas. Moreover, an attempt is made to examine the development potentials of the fisheries sector for the whole rural economy and in compar-ison with the other economic sectors (tourism, etc.). In addition, the effectiveness of the CFP is evaluated in terms of promoting alternative activities in rural coastal 1

areas. Since the study was developed at NUTS2 level, Greece’s most remote regions, which are highly dependent on fisheries, were selected (Voreio and Notio Aigaio). The study first briefly describes the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), focusing on the last program (OFP 2007–2013). Next, the selected methodology and data sources used are explained and then the employed analysis is given, followed by a presentation of the results. Finally, the paper ends with a discussion on the derived results and drawing policy-related conclusions.

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The NUTS (Nomenclature of territorial units for statistics) is a classification system that divides EU economic territory into regions.