A Blueprint For Coastal Adaptation

Tens of millions of Americans are at risk from sea level rise, increased tidal flooding, and intensifying storms. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation identifies a bold new research and policy agenda and provides implementable options for coastal communities responding to these threats. In this book, coastal adaptation experts present a range of climate adaptation policies that could protect coastal communities against increasing risk, including concrete financing recommendations. Coastal adaptation will not be easy, but it is achievable using varied approaches. A Blueprint for Coastal Adaptation will inspire innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about coastal policy at the state and local level while providing actionable, realistic policy and planning options for adaptation professionals and policymakers.

Coastal communities are at the frontline of a changing climate. Escalating problems created by sea-level rise, a greater number of severe coastal storms, and other repercussions of climate change will exacerbate already pervasive impacts resulting from rapid coastal population growth and intensification of development. To prosper in the coming decades, coastal communities need to build their adaptive capacity and resilience. Telling the stories of real-world communities in a wide range of coastal settings, including America’s Gulf of Mexico coast, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, The Maldives, southern Africa, Bangladesh, and Vietnam, the case studies in Climate Change and the Coast: Building Resilient Communities reveal a rich diversity of adaptation approaches. A number of common themes emerge that indicate opportunities, barriers, and on-ground realities for progressing adaptation at the coast. Together, they highlight the need to consciously reflect on current circumstances, contemplate future prospects, and deliberately choose pathways that are attuned to the changing circumstances climate change will bring to coastal regions. This process is termed "reflexive adaptation," capturing the principle of critical self-reflection and self-correction in the face of adversity, uncertainty, surprise, and contestation. Provides practical advice for adapting to climate change based on case studies written by leading specialists with firsthand experience in real-world communities in diverse coastal settings around the globe Integrates insights from research and practice in an accessible way so that coastal communities can plan proactively for a future shaped by climate change Explains how climate change compounds pervasive unsustainable practices in coasts around the world Explores how coastal governance and adaptation theory and practices have evolved Details the barriers and opportunities for adapting to climate change Climate Change and the Coast: Building Resilient Communities will interest those concerned about the future of coastal communities. It shows what has succeeded and what has failed around the world, and where there are opportunities to be grasped and pitfalls to be avoided. It will be invaluable to those involved in enabling adaptation to climate change, including policy-makers, coastal managers, day-to-day decision-makers, students, and researchers.

Australians are famous for our love of the coast, although in many places this 'love' has caused serious and often irreversible impacts. The sustainable management of our society's many uses of the coast is complex and challenging. While a wealth of knowledge exists about the coast, this is not always brought to bear on decision-making. Coastal management to date has had limited success, and in some cases interventions have made problems worse. Australia's coast has been shaped by severe events such as cyclones and floods, with climate change now increasing the number and intensity of these hazards. In addition, our coastal populations are growing, and with them our social, environmental and economic vulnerability to such hazards. This book explores the evolution of coastal management, and provides critical insights into contemporary experience and understanding of coastal management in Australia. It draws on contemporary theory and lessons from case examples to highlight the roles of research and community engagement in coastal management. The book concludes with a chapter of recommendations which can help guide coastal management and research around the world.

For as long as humans have been inhabiting coastal areas and recording what occurs in their environments, coastal zones have been defined through dynamic interactions. And this is further underlined by a more recent development: observed sea level rise. In a thorough but not overly technical approach, Adapting to Sea Level Rise in the Coastal Zone: Law and Policy Considerations provides a legal-policy framework for facing the challenges of sea level rise. The book includes an analysis of sea level rise adaptation strategies that examines the legal impacts of coastal land use decisions based on the current interpretation of private property rights in relation to public control over those rights. The author discusses the science behind sea level rise and highlights policy complexities and options. He then presents an overview of related legalities, and bringing it all together, applies the principles offered in the book, concluding with strategies and solutions and a perspective on the future. If we accept the premise that sea level rise is occurring and will continue for the foreseeable future, then we must begin to consider policy responses to this risk in coastal regions. Part of any pragmatic policy response must include a review of the options available to public institutions when developing and implementing rational adaptation policies. This book offers practical legal/policy approaches to sea level rise adaptation that promotes sound planning in the face of climate change and rising seas.

This open access book explores the intersection of property law, relocation, and resettlement processes in the United States and among communities that grapple with migration as an adaptation strategy. As communities face the prospect of relocating because of rising seas, policy makers, disaster specialists, and community leaders are scrambling to understand what adaptation pathways are legally possible. While in its ideal application, law functions blindly and without variation, the authors find that legal contradictions come to bear on resettlement processes and place certain communities further in harm’s way. This book will unearth these contradictions in order to understand why successful community-based resettlement has presented such a challenge to communities that are experiencing increasing land deterioration as a result of climate change.

Natural disasters from heat waves to coastal and river flooding will inevitably become worse because of greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere. Managing them is possible, but planners, designers, and policymakers need to advance adaptation and preventative measures now. Managing the Climate Crisis: Designing and Building for Floods, Heat, Drought and Wildfire by design and planning experts Jonathan Barnett and Matthijs Bouw is a practical guide to addressing this urgent national security problem. Barnett and Bouw draw from the latest scientific findings and include many recent, real-world examples to illustrate how to manage seven climate-related threats: flooding along coastlines, river flooding, flash floods from extreme rain events, drought, wildfire, long periods of high heat, and food shortages.

No single project or endeavour is immune to the issues that the climate crisis brings. The climate crisis encompasses a broad register of "symptoms" – increased global temperatures and sea-level rise, droughts and extreme bushfire events, salinification and desertification of fertile land, and the list goes on. It reveals and amplifies complex causal relationships that are inherently present and traverse scales, sectors and communities divulging a range of impacts and inequalities. This publication asks designers and academic practitioners to describe their own work through an ecological lens, and then to articulate design approaches for developing new practices in landscape architecture teaching. Designing Landscape Architectural Education: Studio Ecologies for Unpredictable Futures, the Landscape Architecture Design Studio Companion, serves as a resource for academic practitioners in the preparation and delivery of "design-research studios" and students seeking guidance for design methodologies as a part of their landscape architectural education. It draws on the manifold issues of the climate crisis as a set of drivers to examine the utilisation of a range of innovative design approaches to address the current and future priorities of the discipline. The landscape architecture discipline is evolving rapidly to respond to both a broadening and intensification of changes in the environmental, social and political conditions. These changing conditions require innovation that extend the core competencies of landscape architects. This book addresses two fundamental questions – what are the design competencies required of landscape architects to equip them to deal with the complexities brought forth by contemporary society, and as a result, how could we design the future design studio?