Adaptation as part of sustainable shoreline management in England and Wales

This paper reviews the concept of adaptation within the shoreline management framework in England and Wales. In the future it may not be sustainable to continue to defend all the locations on the coast that presently benefit from defences. Adaptation can help deliver more sustainable shoreline management solutions that better manage the risks to the social, economic and environmental function of the coast. Planning for adaptation will require preparing coastal communities for future change and will involve building in flexibility rather than closing off future solutions. A number of case studies are presented which exemplify different aspects of adaptation. The paper demonstrates how future reviews of Shoreline Management Plans (SMPs) could promote more adaptive measures linked to the Coastal Change Management Areas that will feature in the next revision of land use plans. The future challenges to delivering more adaptive solutions are considered by looking at where adaptation may be needed, what more adaptive approaches may look like, and what the barriers to implementation are. One critical area is the greater engagement of local communities and the paper shows how the recent Coastal Pathfinder projects are tackling this issue. The lessons learned from these projects will be invaluable in rolling out adaptive solutions to other areas in the future. Such solutions can be progressed within the policies laid down in the current SMPs but should be updated in future SMP reviews as new information and knowledge becomes available.