Why it’s time to refresh our strategy for keeping the sea at bay

The history of coastal management in Great Britain stretches all the way back to Roman times.

It represents almost 2,000 years of investment in shielding vulnerable communities and infrastructure from the ravages of the sea.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has forecast a significant rise in sea level and the frequency and intensity of storms.

Such trends are likely to cause coastal erosion to speed up considerably.

This risk calls for a wide-ranging response to protect the nation’s coastal settlements accordingly. Not just locally, but at a broader strategic level, too.

What is shoreline management planning?

Shoreline management plans (SMPs) are the core documents that recommend various policies for the coasts of England and Wales.

SMPs focus mainly on “holding the line”. That is, resisting further erosion and reducing the risk of flooding by keeping the shoreline in roughly the same position.

This entails using a mix of hard and soft engineering, such as building sea walls or restoring sand dunes, respectively.

Where possible, they realign sea defences to work more harmoniously with the natural environment.

SMPs need to be ready for climate change

Many relatively straightforward SMP policies have been delivered over the past two decades. 

This was often when there was a clear case for protecting vulnerable communities and/or restoring valued natural habitats.

But we’re entering a new epoch of coastal management in which tougher and more complex decisions must be taken – and soon.

These calls are important, so we can’t afford to delay making them just because they’re going to be difficult.

This point is reinforced in the government’s latest National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England, which collates this sector’s thinking on our climate adaptation needs.

Dealing with the sea level’s accelerating rise calls for more intricate and large-scale schemes, implemented at pace.

For these to succeed, project managers must engage effectively with the communities concerned – from start to finish.

The realities of climate adaptation

The new epoch will see the construction or reinforcement of hard sea defences in several areas.

The financial and legislative tools we have often result in ever-larger structures, even when this might seem unsustainable.

Some defences could be more than 6m high in certain locations along the Severn estuary, for instance.

The task of managing how a large structure interacts with its surroundings – and addressing the remaining, yet potentially catastrophic, risk of failure – is challenging.

A more extensive system, featuring secondary and landward defences, may be needed to mitigate this risk.

Protecting local habitats

Along less developed stretches of coastline, effective climate adaptation may require some particularly nuanced decision-making.

It will be vital to work closely with communities here. Any defensive measure must consider the existing coastal dynamics and so conserve the natural habitats that depend on them.

This could include early engagement to influence planning policy and ensure that new critical infrastructure is located away from the most vulnerable areas.

That can provide the space to redesign the built environment proactively rather than repairing defences reactively.

Set up the frameworks to create sustainable solutions

It’s vital to develop a funding, planning and legislative framework that more easily enables us to protect coastal communities.

Broader engineering interventions need to be considered, too.

These must take the whole space – from nearshore waters to further inland areas – into account. To create resilient coastlines, they must offer several forms of erosion and flood management.

Such changes will help to bring in more holistic, longer-term climate adaptation solutions. And they will create a more sustainable future for all those living along our coasts.

Dr Paul Canning will be speaking at the ICE’s Coastal Management conference in Bristol on 16-18 September.

Join him and other experts in the field to hear their coastal and marine engineering insights.

Register today