Climate-Smart Design for Ecosystem Management: A Test Application for Coral Reefs

Abstract

The interactive and cumulative impacts of climate change on natural resources such as coral reefs present numerous challenges for conservation planning and management. Climate change adaptation is complex due to climate-stressor interactions across multiple spatial and temporal scales. This leaves decision makers worldwide faced with local, regional, and global-scale threats to ecosystem processes and services, occurring over time frames that require both near-term and long-term planning. Thus there is a need for structured approaches to adaptation planning that integrate existing methods for vulnerability assessment with design and evaluation of effective adaptation responses. The Corals and Climate Adaptation Planning project of the U.S. Coral Reef Task Force seeks to develop guidance for improving coral reef management through tailored application of a climate-smart approach. This approach is based on principles from a recently-published guide which provides a framework for adopting forward-looking goals, based on assessing vulnerabilities to climate change and applying a structured process to design effective adaptation strategies. Work presented in this paper includes: (1) examination of the climate-smart management cycle as it relates to coral reefs; (2) a compilation of adaptation strategies for coral reefs drawn from a comprehensive review of the literature; (3) in-depth demonstration of climate-smart design for place-based crafting of robust adaptation actions; and (4) feedback from stakeholders on the perceived usefulness of the approach. We conclude with a discussion of lessons-learned on integrating climate-smart design into real-world management planning processes and a call from stakeholders for an “adaptation design tool” that is now under development.

Adaptation Design Tool for Climate-Smart Management of Coral Reefs and Other Natural Resources

“…As mentioned, the first phase of the CCAP project (West et al 2016 ) adapted the general climate-smart cycle (Stein et al 2014 ) and assessed its applicability to coral reefs. Figure 1 shows the adapted climate-smart cycle, which includes general steps in a typical planning process where climate change information can be used to improve management effectiveness.…”

“…The adaptation design framework (center of Fig. 1 ) was used to build a Compendium of adaptation ideas for coral reef managers, drawn from an extensive review of the literature (West et al 2016 ). The Compendium organizes information according to seven general adaptation strategies (Box 1 ) (West and Julius 2014 ), placing ideas for specific adaptation options into these ‘bins’ to ensure that all categories of approaches are considered.…”

“…The Adaptation Design Tool is a product of the Corals & Climate Adaptation Planning (CCAP) project, a collaborative effort of the Climate Change Working Group of the interagency U.S. Coral Reef Task Force, whose mission is to tailor and test general principles of climate-smart adaptation (Stein et al 2014 ), specifically for coral reef management. In the first phase of the CCAP project, West et al ( 2016 ) developed a ‘Compendium’ of adaptation options from the literature, to help coral reef managers consider new climate-smart adaptation strategies and management actions as part of their existing management portfolios.…”

“…The Design Tool was developed and tested over a three-year period in collaboration with coral reef managers, scientists, and practitioners. We begin by providing an overview of the Design Tool in the context of the climate-smart cycle (West et al 2016 ), followed by a description of the basic components and workflow for using the tool (Parker et al 2017 ) 1 . The results from testing the Design Tool in two coral reef settings--Guánica Bay, Puerto Rico and West Maui, Hawai’i--are compared in order to examine similarities, differences, and lessons learned.…”

Peering into the future of wildlands management

“…, coral reefs, West et al. ), this volume represents one of the fullest efforts to date to explore and test its application.…”