As in many European Countries, current urbanisation trend in Sardinia faces a heavy pressure on coastal zones. The need to protect through a proper management and wise use of resources such a sensible environmental zones as the coastal areas where terrestrial and marine ecosystem interface has been recognised internationally. Although international agreements on Integrated Coastal Zones Management (ICZM) state this urgency, and several pilot research projects have been developed in the Mediterranean in the last decades offering interesting but differentiated case studies and guidelines for actions, still the debate is open on how to properly implement ICZM processes.

In this contribution, the authors, after presenting the overview the state of the art ICZM research developed so far, propose a framework analysis to support putting ICZM into practice based on the cooperation among different level of spatial government. This approach is tested on the Sardinia case study, and the resulting findings are presented in order to support ICZM implementation in the Island. This approach, although dependent on regional institutional conditions, may be reliable to be applied in other context worldwide where the actual spatial planning system offer a sufficient level of development.