Socio-Economic Assessment of Ecosystem-Based and Other Adaptation Strategies in Coastal Areas: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Coastal areas are highly vulnerable to climate-change hazards (e.g., sea-level rise, flooding, coastal erosion), which can lead to significant impacts at the ecosystem and societal level. Interest in ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA) is gaining importance due to its potential multiple benefits, including social and environmental aspects, when compared to more traditional approaches such as hard engineering interventions. When assessing EbA strategies, further understanding of the nature–society functions, processes, values, and benefits is needed to increase its application. This study contributes to better knowledge of EbA and other adaptation strategies by developing a systematic literature review of studies performing socio-economic assessments of climate-change adaptation in coastal areas. The analysis of 54 publications revealed that cost–benefit analysis was applied in most studies, followed by multi-criteria analysis and other techniques. Hybrid adaptation strategies based on different combinations of hard, soft, and EbA interventions were considered as potential optimal solutions in a significant part of the assessments. This study shows some potential co-benefits of EbA, such as livelihood diversification or biodiversity conservation, but also stresses the need for further research on this topic, as well as on evaluating how EbA performs in the long term under changing climate-condition scenarios.

Climate-Induced Coastal Hazards, Impacts and Adaptation Responses: A Systematic Review

“…Sea-level rise, coastal flooding, climate change and variability (rainfall and temperature), cyclones, storm surges, coastal erosion, saltwater intrusion, hurricanes, and typhoons were found to be the main climate-induced coastal hazards. Particularly, sea-level rise (22) was the most studied (55%) climate-induced coastal hazard, whereas both coastal flooding and climate change and variability (rainfall and temperature) were the second most addressed coastal hazards (21), each accounting for 52.5% (Table 2). It is believed that the melting of glaciers due to global warming is the major cause of the increment in sea-levels.…”

Changes of the Coastal Zones Due to Climate Change

“…Consequently, coastal ecosystems, marine biodiversity, infrastructure, and human settlements are vulnerable to the impacts of these changes. References [1,2] aim to investigate and address these concerns, providing valuable scientific evidence to aid in the development of comprehensive coastal zone management and climate adaptation plans.…”

“…Apostolopoulos et al [1] investigate the use of remote sensing tools to monitor changes in critical parameters affecting the spatiotemporal coastline evolution of a protected ecosystem. The authors modeled the erosion-accretion cycle in the past decades to date and monitored the long-term changes in the Prokopos Lagoon shoreline in the Peloponnese area.…”