STRATEGIES TO COMBINE THE FUNCTIONS OF ECOLOGY AND NAVIGATION IN THE SCHELDT ESTUARY

During recent years, water management in The Netherlands has been broa dening its scope by: (a) including aspects of economics, sociology and physical planning, and (b) introducing interactive policy making; thi s paper illustrates these developments using the Westerschelde estuary as an example. The Westerschelde strategy aims at optimizing the mult i-national use of this estuary. The main functions are navigation and ecology and the paper shows how these functions can be combined. An in teractive management model, the 'COSMO-Westerschelde' is described, wh ich assists decision makers in comparing strategies for estuarine mana gement under different scenarios.