Resilience and coastal governance: knowledge and navigation between stability and transformation

Abstract

Several intergovernmental agreements highlight the need for resilience in the face of environmental and societal challenges. Coastal systems are particularly complex and susceptible to global climate change, and building human resilience to future changes is of high priority. While the concept of resilience has historically been associated with stability to perturbations, the notion of transformation within the social-ecological resilience (SER) approach has recently gained importance in ecosystem management. In order to operationalize resilience in the context of coastal governance in a changing climate, a better understanding of the concept is required. This paper provides an overview of different approaches to resilience, including stability and transformation, in order to understand resilience as a concept in a coastal governance context. Subsequently, we propose five steps and three types of knowledge (system, target, transformative) with which to embed SER in coastal governance. In addition, we consider scale and system boundaries; identify (un)desirable system characteristics and the role of normative goals and common visions in resilience management. Finally, we highlight the central role that local actors and information services play in fostering a two-way exchange between science and society and tailoring solutions for establishing or enhancing SER to the needs of local actors. We conclude that the navigation between stability and transformation within the concept of resilience is central to finding sustainable future pathways in the face of climate change.

Social innovation that connects people to coasts in the Anthropocene

“…Governance tailored to interconnected, social-ecological systems across the land-ocean interface enhances the sustainability of coastal terrestrial and marine systems and cities (SDGs 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities, 14: Life Below Water, and 15: Life on Land) (Singh et al, 2021). Similarly, anticipation in governance contributes to finding shared and common visions about alternative future states of climate resilience and sustainable coastal social-ecological systems including urban areas (SDGs 11,13,14,and 15) (e.g., Levin et al, 2021;Rölfer et al, 2022;Vervoort & Gupta, 2018). Finally, lived experiences and values -similar to authentic engagement -creates the conditions for justice and equity among societal actors, including intersectional approaches to inequalities, e.g., by including actors from different cultural backgrounds, gender, and ages (SDGs 5, 10, and 11) (e.g., Staffa et al, 2022).…”

Climate-smart socially innovative tools and approaches for marine pollution science in support of sustainable development

“…However, the SES framework is becoming more prominent in understanding coastal systems (Lazzari et al, 2019;Lazzari et al, 2020) as an approach to integrate and disentangle the complex dynamics between both social and ecological system components. The framework has recently been applied in several coastal-ocean settings, such as tourism and fisheries (Lazzari et al, 2021); coastal zone governance (Delgado et al, 2021); marine pollution (Riechers et al, 2021); and coastal resilience (Rölfer et al, 2022). The SESs perspective is suitable to understand the nature of adaption to climate change (Salgueiro-Otero & Ojea, 2020).…”

“…The SESs perspective is suitable to understand the nature of adaption to climate change (Salgueiro-Otero & Ojea, 2020). The concept of SESs is closely linked to sustainability research (Horcea-Milcu et al, 2020) and numerous recent studies have highlighted the need for transformative knowledge and action towards achieving sustainability goals in coastal areas and the SESs in their entirety (e.g., Charli-Joseph et al, 2018;Folke et al, 2021;Rölfer et al, 2022). To produce such transformative knowledge, such as the identification of management solutions that can tackle sustainability challenges, the dynamic interplay of system components and processes in SESs must be established, and potential positive and negative effects, such as those highlighted in Section 2.3, must be identified.…”

Co-designing marine science beyond good intentions: support stakeholders’ empowerment in transformative pathways

“…Co-design should not be a simple justification for the usefulness of science by extracting stakeholders knowledge, but a direct and concrete way to improve sustainability in IPLCs through collective learning (Yahara et al, 2021). The integration of local knowledge through the direct, concrete, equitable (Bennett, 2018) and long-term involvement of stakeholders (Rölfer et al, 2022) is necessary for the transformations of marine and coastal socio-ecosystems (d 'Hont and Schlinger, 2022). Since knowledge plays a central role in the decision-making process, participating in knowledge production through the academic system can be a lever for empowering local communities to take an active role in shaping the policies for sustainability (Ragueneau et al, 2018).…”