The onset of the Anthropocene necessitates new forms of environmental planning and management as communities adapt to new ecological realities. Despite the global reach of the Anthropocene, localized adaptation strategies are critical for a successful transition into this new epoch. Within local contexts, inclusive, democratic political processes facilitate complex and effective ecological solutions to social problems resulting from environmental change. Genuine incorporation of local knowledge into the decision-making process is critical to fostering this ecological democracy and building effective adaptation strategies. Coastal systems are important nexus points to investigate the relationship between environmental problems and social processes. Fisheries are a critical piece of coastal systems that sustain local communities and the larger economy. I provide a case study of local adaptation to ecological changes as the State of Louisiana attempts to protect vulnerable communities, infrastructure, and fisheries through coastal planning and management. Louisiana's fisheries are a critical asset that stand to be significantly impacted by continuing coastal erosion. Like the Anthropocene itself, Louisiana's coastal erosion crisis is largely the result of human intervention in the biosphere for social and economic purposes. The state's adaptive response is an ambitious master plan that seeks to rebuild the coast and protect its communities and economic interests. Although the plan is ambitious and generally lauded, I argue that the top-down approach the State of Louisiana uses in setting coastal priorities undercuts the plan's efficacy by struggling to incorporate local knowledge and establish a trusting relationship with coastal stakeholders. Without a genuinely deliberative process that bridges across scales and knowledge systems, the state will ultimately struggle to draw in local knowledge, inhibiting comanagement of local fisheries and potentially undermining the ecological solutions it aims to achieve.

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Louisiana’s Comprehensive Master Plan for a Sustainable Coast is the state of Louisiana’s ambitious response to its continuing land loss crisis. Coastal restoration enjoys universal approval as a political issue in the state; however, controversy exists over a specific project type that seeks to divert sediment from the Mississippi River into surrounding marsh. While the State argues that sediment diversions are critical for land building, widespread concerns persist that changes to the estuary will generate economic hardship for coastal communities. This study investigates the structural challenges that diversion opponents have faced in their effort to mount effective resistance to the State’s sediment diversion projects. The study uses Lukes’ radical perspective of power to explore the ways in which the institutional configuration in Louisiana’s coastal zone produces an insular bureaucratic coalition that limits political opportunity for excluded groups to affect the coastal planning process. This article argues that this coalition, and the State and the energy industry in particular, has been able to leverage non-decision power and ideology to inhibit mobilization against the diversion component of the coastal master plan.

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