During the 1970's, a small cadre of forward-looking North Carolinians, including visionary coastal geologist Stan Riggs, banded together to create a firm technical and legal foundation on which to anchor a robust and adaptable governance framework for the future of North Carolina's coast. This work led directly to most of the keystone laws, the citizen rule-making commissions and the diverse management programs upon which we rely today. During the 1980's and 1990's, those baseline programs were amplified with additional requirements to integrate coastal management programs, and to factor in the ever-changing nature of coastal landscapes and seascapes. These efforts culminated in the 1994 Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan of the Albemarle-Pamlico National Estuary Program, the 1997 Marine Fisheries Reform Act and its requirements for state-level sustainable fisheries and for the development of a Coastal Habitat Protection Plan (approved in 2004), and the 1998 South Atlantic Comprehensive Habitat Plan. This paper looks at the progress -- and problems -- in leveraging these world-class tools towards the resilient coastal ecosystem plans originally envisioned by the Riggsian band 40 years ago.

While North Carolina has done a remarkable job in developing the tools needed to set the stage for integrated ecosystem-based management, none of these programs have yet reached their potential. Significant additional work is necessary to account for predictable changes in basic ocean and coastal ecology related to global warming, sea level rise, ocean acidification, shifting distribution and abundance patterns of organisms, exotic species proliferation and other cascading effects. Recommendations from state-level commissions on global climate change, offshore energy and related topics have endorsed significant additional investment in understanding and addressing these needs.

Recently, budgetary belt-tightening and political shifts at the state level portend further changes in the coastal governance mosaic. The time is right for us today to band together to stay the course set by the original visionaries, and to re-energize North Carolina citizens to work for a sustainable coastal future.