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An efficient and adequate environmental monitoring plan is essential to any integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) program. The purpose of this paper is to apply an environmental diagnostic study to a coastal lagoon using anthropogenic markers as a decision support tool to aid the development of coastal environmental management policies.

Specifically, environmental status and anthropogenic sources were determined as part of a coastal environmental management plan; a study of human occupation and use was conducted to determine the predominant human activities around the lagoon; an environmental diagnostic study was conducted to determine the occurrence, levels and distribution of markers; and the results of the environmental diagnostic study were compared to indicators stipulated in Brazilian legislation.

Land use study revealed both urban and rural activities around the lagoon, as evidenced by the existence of residences, restaurants as well as poultry and livestock activities. The environmental diagnostic study revealed the input of human sewage (treated and raw) and runoff from animal husbandry activities.

The information produced using anthropogenic markers showed the influence of less studied rural activities, such as livestock and poultry farming, thereby providing a more reliable environmental status compared to the use of classic indicators employed in laws issued by international and Brazilian agencies.

The present results show that classic indicators used by environmental agencies are insufficient for an accurate diagnosis of coastal zones with multiple anthropogenic activities. Thus, the modernization of the environmental monitoring plan of the ICZM program is urgently needed for a more accurate assessment of coastal environments.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

It has often been said that a great part of the strength of Aslib lies in the fact that it brings together those whose experience has been gained in many widely differing fields but who have a common interest in the means by which information may be collected and disseminated to the greatest advantage. Lists of its members have, therefore, a more than ordinary value since they present, in miniature, a cross‐section of institutions and individuals who share this special interest.

The rapid growth in the British public sector since the turn of the century, and particularly since the end of the last war, has been most noticeably experienced in the social services. By 1974, expenditure on the health, welfare, education, housing, and income maintenance services accounted for almost half of total expenditure, having grown at an average rate of exactly ten per cent per annum since 1951. Unfortunately, this growth has not been accompanied by an increased awareness of the need for socio‐economic monitoring and analysis of service provision. Only since the oil crisis of 1973, as cutback has followed cutback, and as central and local government administrators have been faced with the problem of increasing, or at least maintaining, output levels whilst input supplies have steadily fallen, has attention been focused upon efficiency and effectiveness.