8.4. Sustainable Management of Coasts

Question 1

Coastal management has three main aims:

Answer 1

1) Protecting the coast from erosion
2) Protecting the coastline from flooding by seawater
3) Conserving fragile coastal ecosystems

Question 2

Sustainable coastal management considerations

Answer 2

1) Environmental Sustainability
2) Social Sustainability
3) Economic Sustainability

Question 3

Environmental Sustainability

Answer 3

• Conserving coastal ecosystems, reducing or preventing pollution of the coastline and maintaining the aesthetic appeal of coastal areas (look of coastline)

Question 4

Social Sustainability

Answer 4

• Maintaining the coherence and vitality of coastal communities by maintaining or improving their quality of life
• For example, coastal management needs to ensure that people are not made homeless because their houses have been destroyed by coastal erosion or coastal flooding

Question 5

Economic Sustainability

Answer 5

• Ensuring coastal communities are able to maintain their standard of living
• This could involve maintenance of coastal fisheries, fostering tourism, or protecting valuable economic assets from destruction by coastal erosion
• Economic sustainability also implies that the cost of any management strategies should be balanced by the benefits that those strategies bring

Question 6

Achieving Successful Sustainable Management

Answer 6

Sustainable management implies that the strategies involved should not just work in the present but also in the future, ideally with minimum maintenance costs
→ Therefore, it is complex and difficult to achieve
→ There have been many instances of coastal management strategies which have worked in one place but which have had detrimental effects on other parts of the coastline
→ Successful coastal management requires a thorough understanding of all processes and factors that are operating on the stretch of coastline that is to be managed
→ Some argue that all coastal management is futile. They adopt the view that expensive coastal management only delays the inevitable and that the sea will always win in the end

Question 7

Coastal defence options

Answer 7

1) Hold the line
2) Advance the line
3) Managed Realignment
4) No active intervention

Question 8

Hold the line as a Coastal defence option

Answer 8

• Maintaining and repairing the current coastal defences so that the coastline is protected from further coastal erosion and so that the risk of future coastal flooding is not increased
• Method considered increasingly expensive due to rising sea levels and frequent coastal storms

Question 9

Advance the line as a Coastal defence option

Answer 9

• Building new defences on the seaward side of the original defences
• This may involve reclaiming land from the sea but it is a very expensive method in a future affected by global warming

Question 10

Managed Realignment as a Coastal defence option

Answer 10

Allowing the shoreline to move backwards or forwards but with the use of management strategies that will control this movement

Question 11

No active intervention as a Coastal defence option

Answer 11

• This is also known was the ‘do nothing’ strategy
• There will be no further investment in coastal defence
• This is popular with the taxpayer but is unpopular with local people who will lose their farms, houses or businesses in the near future

Question 12

Cost-benefit Analysis

Answer 12

• When deciding on whether the implement a coastal management strategy, a cost-benefit analysis is often undertaken
• The costs of the strategy are usually defined in economic terms - how much it will cost to build or implement. Social and environmental costs are much more difficult to calculate and are often ignored as a result
• The benefits of the strategy are also defined in economic terms
• If the benefits are greater than the costs, the management strategy will be implemented
• If the costs outweigh the benefits the strategy is considered to be uneconomic and will not go ahead