To facilitate ICZM, we discern three types of arrangements which need attention.

Institutional arrangements

These take care of the co-ordination of management practises at the different levels (vertical integration) and sectors (horizontal integration) of public institutions. These institutes (ministries, research institutes, departments) might already exist in which case linkages between them must be created or strengthened. If they don't, they have to be created.

Horizontal vs. vertical
The direction of integration is time dependent: planning may start with the co-ordination of plans of several ministries and during evaluation involve vertical integration within each ministry. The opposite happened in the USA, where provisions for public involvement were extended throughout the planning and implementation process.

Roles and responsibilities
The role of institutions who take part in ICZM is threefold (UNEP95):

• an executive role, for decision making;
• a judicial role, for enacting regulations and directives, standards and procedure enforcement and arbitration;
• a marked role, allocating funds, offering incentives or subsidies.

At each level, specific responsibilities can be discerned. National administration should be concerned with development and implementation of broad coastal management policy, and designate a lead agency for coastal management at the national level (e.g. a ministry). The policy should be formulated in a basic plan which can be used to inform lower authorities about the intentions of the national government. Regional administration must, depending on its authority, make more detailed but integrated planning. They also have to co-ordinate the activities of local authorities. Local administration has detailed planning, development and implementation tasks.

Legal arrangements

The jurisdiction over the coastal zone is very complex. In many countries the sea bordering the land is under jurisdiction of a regional government. The zone between 12 and 200 nautical miles may be - and often is - claimed as an exclusive economical zone since the Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982 was enforced. The land bordering the sea is under jurisdiction of the local government, though the sea defence might be under jurisdiction of an institute who is responsible for safety against flooding (e.g., a water board). Further, some countries allow people to have private ownership of the beach, and nature conservation institutes might own large nature areas in the coastal zone, either in the sea, the land or both.

This is the situation in which ICZM must operate. The ICZM program must apply to the whole geographical area which is involved in the issues at hand, irrespective of legislative aspects. Thus, the area to which the program will apply, will cross legislative boundaries anyhow, even international ones, if necessary. To ICZM program must therefore carefully be designed. It must comply with the need to have legal authority to regulate activities on the land and in the sea. In some cases such an authority already exists; it need not be replaced, but be incorporated in the ICZM process somewhere in the future.

Example: a complicated area

An example of an ICZM program in an area crossing several borders is the Waddensea project. The project contains land and sea from three countries, and in each country several provinces and many communities are affected. The Trilateral Governmental Conferences which are held every 3 - 4 years, are the highest decision making body in the framework of the collaboration. In the periods between the Governmental Conferences, the Trilateral Working Group (TWG), as a permanent working group meets, on average, four 4-3 times a year. The TWG is composed of civil servants of the responsible ministries and other relevant ministries as well as regional authorities. 

Financial Arrangements

The amount of funding necessary will vary during the several stages and vary according to the specific setting of a region.
If necessary institutions exist, having staff from appropriate disciplines and experience, and much information (for the coastal profile) is already available, large sums of funding are not required during the Initiation and Planning stages. The mentioned staff could be delegated to an ICZM office leaving a few selected positions open for funding. The funding of these might be received from the national government or from international agencies. 

However, if people must be trained and / or hired, or institutions have to be set up, the financial needs rise. This particularly applies if during the implementation stage large projects are started in the coastal zone.

Fortunately, since the Earth Summit in 1992, international agencies and donors are increasingly willing to fund ICZM related activities. One of the reasons is that international agreements now state that any activity in coastal zones on a national level should be carried out within the framework of ICZM. Funds could be given by the WorldBank, a regional development bank, the Global Environment Facility and international aid agencies in several countries. 

Also the European Union provides funding for a ICZM related projects. Have a look for more information.