Future proofing Scotland's remote coastal areas: evaluation of the potential for nature-based coastal adaptation

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Restoring natural coastal systems is increasingly viewed as an effective strategy toadapt and enhance resilience to the adverse effects of climate change in coastalareas, which are projected to experience severe impacts due to increased exposureto coastal flooding and erosion hazards under rising sea levels (IPCC, 2019).Growing numbers of approaches to restore coastal dynamics by working withnatural processes to manage vulnerable coastal areas, including beachnourishment, dune rebuilding, wetland restoration and managed retreat, haveemerged as key nature-based solutions (NBS) in the past decade (e.g. Temmermanet al., 2013). In many cases, these approaches have been implemented asdemonstration projects in protected areas, in estuaries or fronting urban, highdensitysettlements (Bridges et al., 2018). However, often remote and sparselypopulated rural areas can still have surprisingly relevant levels of coastaloccupation, from buildings, infrastructure, cultural heritage and resources thatconnect these communities and sustain rural livelihoods. As such, robustadaptation approaches that are specifically suited to the challenges of rural coastalareas need to be urgently considered, embedding interrelated aspects such as theevidence-base on coastal environmental change, now and in the future, andassociated risks to communities, coupled with the legal and policy frameworks,sustainable financing, government and community support necessary to identifyand implement rural coastal adaptation options.In Scotland the vast majority of the coast is characterized as rural, but withimportant distinctions between accessible and remote rural and, notably, withpresent and future erosion and flooding placing relevant assets at risk across allcoastal cells in Scotland (Hansom et al., 2017). Since 2016 the ScottishGovernment's Dynamic Coast project [www.dynamiccoast.com] has transformedthe evidence base of past, recent and anticipated coastal change across Scotlandand further enhancements expect in winter 2020/1. Whilst this is rekindling interestin targeted coastal planning instruments such as Shoreline Management Plans, anurban-rural divide remains, leaving non-urban shores disproportionately underresourcedin monitoring, detailed planning policies and dedicated fundingmechanisms to increase resilience and implement coastal adaptation actions.Research in this area is thus urgently needed, to identify the rural areas requiringadaptation, the suite of NBS that can be used and the policy, financing and socialenablers that can better support NBS implementation. The recently announced andunprecedented provision of ~£12m of Scottish Government funding for coastaladaptation, means that this research project is extremely timely and would directlysupport proactive adaptation to rural coastal climate change (Brown et al., 2017).