ore than half the world's entire coastline has been put under severe pressure by development. Coastal cities have expanded rapidly. Industries have flocked to the shore, especially those connected to the sea, such as oil exploration, or those needing to be near ports. And tourism - which makes huge demands on land, building materials, water and waste-disposal facilities - puts pressure on natural coastal habitats, destroying, to take just one example, turtle nesting sites.

Coastal and ocean resources can be managed sustainably, but it is difficult because responsibility for them has been fragmented and many different interests are involved. Yet recently an increasing number of small-scale tourist developments have been built on ecological and sustainable principles.

Take Mozambique's Guludo eco-lodge, which meets tourists' needs while providing community projects that reduce poverty and promote biological and cultural diversity. Set in the Quirimbas National Park - rich in beautiful beaches, coastal forests, corals, mangroves and seagrasses - it sets out to develop local capabilities and use local materials, and to make the minimum impact on the environment and local ways of life. Visitors stay in bandas, spacious tented huts with roofs thatched with makuti palm, built with minimal energy, and with thought as to how the buildings and materials can eventually be reused or recycled.

Then there's the Mata de Sesimbra ecotourism project in Portugal, the world's first large-scale integrated sustainable-building programme, set in an area where urban development is causing coastal erosion, habitat fragmentation and other problems. WWF and BioRegional's One Planet Living initiative will combine a 4,800-hectare nature reserve and native pine and oak forest restoration project with a 500-hectare tourism development of up to 25,000 beds. Its developers, Pelicano, won local and national backing, in competition with conventional mass-tourism schemes.

The $1.2-billion project is set to be a global flagship in sustainable development and tourism. It will use sustainable building materials and has ambitious targets for increasing energy and water efficiency and for reducing waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Visitors will pay a green tax to fund restoration, which will include reinstating ecological corridors and recovering wetlands and other important riverine and coastal habitats.