Coast-Adapt: Coastal Adaptive Capacity Assessment Guidelines
This tool aims to provide guidance for the development and application of an index-based adaptive capacity assessment in coastal social-ecological systems to support future management decisions aimed at reducing social vulnerability and increasing adaptive capacity
Marine and coastal ecosystems are increasingly subject to loss and degradation, severely affecting the livelihood of people who rely on the services that these ecosystems provide. However, people will be affected differently as a result of their capacity to adapt to change, including taking advantage of potential benefits where they occur. This is shaped by the social, economic, and political context within which communities operate. Nature-based Solutions (NBS) place people and nature at the heart of their approach. As such, to understand how blue Nature-based Solutions can effectively support coastal communities to adapt to these changes, it is critical to understand which communities are more vulnerable to the impacts of climate change or ecosystem loss, what conditions enable them to anticipate, respond, and adapt to these changes, how this changes over time, and how we can enhance this capacity.
Adaptive capacity assessments can tell you which communities are more socially and economically vulnerable to the impacts of climate change or ecosystem loss, and characterise under which conditions these communities can anticipate and respond to these changes. They support identification of where different actions may be required and what strategies may support people to enhance their capacity to respond and adapt to changes in future conditions and management. By identifying the conditions under which communities would be better able to harness the benefits arising from management changes, adaptive capacity assessments may help facilitate the successful design of interventions, such as blue Nature-based Solutions. Conducting adaptive capacity assessments, if specifically designed to do so, also enables local knowledge to be gathered and shared among different actors. In turn, this promotes social learning and generates opportunities to identify adaptation strategies that are more suitable for the context of a specific community. As such, these assessments require strong public participation and should be conducted as part of a robust stakeholder engagement strategy that helps educate and garner social buy-in and support for adaptation actions.
To help understand the adaptive capacity of coastal communities and identify the
priorities of intervention, MaCoBioS has developed a 9-step framework, Coast-Adapt, to support researchers and practitioners to design, implement, and apply index-based adaptive capacity assessments that can effectively support adaptation strategies in coastal social-ecological systems. The aim of this framework is to provide a roadmap for the development and implementation of these assessments in contexts of climate change adaptation in coastal social-ecological systems.
Coast-Adapt was informed by scientific literature as well as existing index-based adaptive capacity assessments of coastal social-ecological systems. Further information will be made available soon.
So that you can use Coast-Adapt in developing your own adaptive capacity assessment in a coastal social-ecological system. You can access the full methodological guidance.
What is Coast-Adapt?
Coast-Adapt is a set of guidelines that aid in the design and conduct of a local index-based adaptive capacity assessment for coastal communities to evaluate current status and plan actions to support communities to adapt to the effects of future change.
Why should Coast-Adapt be used?
Coast-Adapt provides a robust and transparent methodological guidelines for designing an index-based adaptive capacity assessment to evaluate the ability of coastal communities to adapt to risks presented by climate change and/or ecosystem degradation or loss.
When should Coast-Adapt be used?
Coast-Adapt is a general set of guidelines, and as such it can be adjusted to be used at all stages of decision-making regarding intervention options, including blue Nature-based Solutions. It may be used to provide baseline information about the capability of local communities to adapt to changes, which can be useful for designing an intervention, as well as facilitating monitoring.
How does Coast-Adapt work?
Coast-Adapt is a 9-step framework that provides practical guidance for how to design and conduct an index-based adaptive capacity assessment in coastal social-ecological systems.
What is the output of Coast-Adapt?
The output is a collection of qualitative and quantitative information about the capacity level of coastal communities to anticipate and respond to changes, as well as the conditions that underpin such capacity.
What do you need to use Coast-Adapt?
To use Coast-Adapt the following are required:
(1) A clear conceptualisation of the problem the assessment aims to address. This requires understanding the country/regional context and the local coastal social-ecological system, as well as hazards and/or risks exacerbated by climate change, ecosystem degradation or loss and social, economic, institutional, and governance factors;
(2) Awareness of the roles of different actors in the coastal social-ecological system to be involved in the design and implementation of the adaptive capacity assessment and a clear participatory strategy to identify data and information sources and co-design relevant indicators; and
(3) Coast-Adapt guidance.
MaCoBioS has provided guidance to enable you to use Coast-Adapt, however, given that adaptive capacity is highly contextualised, Coast-Adapt should be based on the specific characteristics of the social-ecological system and priorities of local stakeholders.
Meet the researchers:
Coast-Adapt has been produced as a collaborative activity across the MaCoBioS consortium but its development was led by Fabiola Espinoza Cordova, Dr Torsten Krause, and Professor Emily Boyd at the LUCSUS Centre for Sustainability Studies from Lund University.