Abstract
European coasts face multiple, interacting and cumulative pressures including those resulting from increasing greenhouse gas emissions (e.g. sea-level rise, Ocean warming, Ocean acidification, extreme events) and localised activities such as fishing, aquaculture, waste disposal and coastal urbanisation. These create a unique set of context-specific issues that need to be addressed holistically, considering the dynamics between both coastal societies and ecosystems as part of interconnected social-ecological systems. Building and enhancing resilience to these pressures requires coastal social-ecological systems that can persist, adapt or transform while maintaining their essential functions to deliver ecosystem services for both nature and people. This Position Paper presents key policy and scientific recommendations on how to build coastal resilience and enhance capacity to cope with impacts from climate change and other pressures. While this Position Paper focuses on the European continent, including the United Kingdom and other non-European Union countries, and does not specifically include the European Union outermost regions, the conclusions and recommendations may also be applied to other regions.
Chapter 1 sets the scene by providing an overview of European coasts, resilience and the governance context. Chapter 2 gives an overview of concepts and frameworks for building coastal resilience, along with a six-step approach for their use in coastal management. The key pressures facing European coastal social-ecological systems and their impacts are described in Chapter 3, including knowledge gaps for individual pressures, their combined effects, and tipping points at which a transition to a new state is triggered. Chapter 4 presents tools for building coastal resilience, with a specific focus on coastal protection and Nature-based Solutions, as well as barriers and enablers to the implementation of these tools. Chapter 5 provides practical context for the concepts, frameworks, pressures, tools, barriers and enablers, and recommendations through three case-studies across Europe: the Maharees Peninsula, Ireland; the Venice Lagoon, Italy; and the Belgian Coast. Chapter 6 presents recommendations for policymakers, scientists and communities to work towards resilient coastal systems. This document is primarily targeted at policymakers, programme managers, research funders and the wider science-policy and scientific communities who are making decisions that will influence the future resilience of European coasts.
The policy brief based on this position paper can be found here.