Marine

Agricultural University of Iceland

Partner profile – Agricultural University of Iceland

The Agricultural University of Iceland (AUI) is a public higher education institution in Iceland. The university has three campus areas, the main is in Hvanneyri, West Iceland, approximately 90 km from the city centre of Reykjavik. The university has three faculties; Agricultural Sciences, Environmental & Forest Sciences and Planning & Design.

In the COAST project AUI focuses on methods and the advent of marine planning in Iceland. Marine and coastal settlements are a large part of the landscape and the culture of the country, where small villages have developed on the coastline around the exploitation of marine resources. The Icelandic coastal zones are today under increasing pressure from a multitude of activities, resulting in a competition over the same space for food production on land and in the sea, tourism and recreational activities, biodiversity, infrastructure and industry. The main demo site in COAST is the Westfjords but information is also gathered from the Husavik area in the north and from the Eastfjords. It is investigated how national regulations in Iceland for coastal planning translate into a local context and how the development learns from earlier planning processes in Iceland and in other countries.