Enabling Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Systems: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Climate change poses increasingly severe risks for coastal ecosystems and coastal communities all around the globe. This condition requires implementing climate adaptation policy and advancing scientific knowledge to adapt to the current and future climate risks. However, implementing climate adaptation policy in coastal areas is still in its infancy. This paper provides insight into 650 peer‐reviewed empirical research studies on coastal climate adaptation from the past two decades, providing global evidence on the status quo and distilling six relevant research gaps: (a) minimal contribution to the implementation phase of the adaptation policy cycle; (b) geographical imbalance toward specific ecoregions and coastal sub‐systems; (c) less attention to regional scale; (d) lack of sectoral integration; (e) poor contextualization within policy and coastal governance instruments and management arrangements; (f) limited economic and financial focus. Therefore, this paper identifies areas where future empirical research can help fill current knowledge gaps and improve coastal communities' ability to adapt to climate change. This increased knowledge will enhance the resilience of coastal social‐ecological systems in the face of environmental challenges.

Fusion of Probabilistic Projections of Sea-Level Rise

“…The fusion does not circumvent the need for local contextualisation of sea-level assessments (Blankespoor et al, 2023). Beyond assessment, other aspects of the coastal adaptation cycleplanning, implementation, and monitoringare essential and require further research (Cabana et al, 2023). Diverse disciplinary experts, practitioners, and local stakeholders offer complementary perspectives that can enrich sea-level science, enabling usability (Durand et al, 2022;.…”

Climate change and human security in coastal regions

“…For example, in terms of coastal critical infrastructure, this implies building early warning systems and adaptive capacity across different levels of organisation, especially where it comes to the task of effectively implementing local adaptation actions (Huddleston et al, 2023). However, the current academic evidence base is strongly biased towards assessing risk, planning and monitoring rather than implementing coastal adaptation, and lacks an integration of existing coastal management and governance instruments with climate change adaptation frameworks (Cabana et al, 2023). A synthesis to understand and manage crosssectoral governance conflicts highlights conceptual differences and commonalities across disciplines to develop problem-solving frameworks of coastal and marine governance, including ecosystem-based management, adaptive co-management, integrated management, collaborative governance and marine spatial planning, and others (Bellanger et al, 2020).…”

Patterns in Reported Adaptation Constraints: Insights from Peer-Reviewed Literature on Flood and Sea-Level Rise

“…These adaptation gaps can be attributed to various adaptation constraints. Such constraints arise from a wide range of factors, such as physical, ecological, social, economic, financial, educational, technological, and governance [8][9][10]. Furthermore, the prevalence of these constraints is specific to the adapting actor, or the location of the climate impact [8,11].…”

“…Such constraints arise from a wide range of factors, such as physical, ecological, social, economic, financial, educational, technological, and governance [8][9][10]. Furthermore, the prevalence of these constraints is specific to the adapting actor, or the location of the climate impact [8,11]. This specificity of the constraints can also be seen in the rich empirical evidence on CCA [4,10], which reports a wide range of adaptation constraints and drivers that play out for different types of CCA performed by various actors in diverse (geographical) contexts.…”