Policy Coherence for Climate Change Adaptation at the Land-Sea Interface in Ireland

ABSTRACT

One area where climate adaptation policies are proving difficult to design and implement is at the coast. On one hand, some of the most severe impacts of climate change are being recorded at the coast – especially through erosion and flooding – whilst on the other hand, these areas represent complex land-sea planning and policy interfaces. This paper analyses the coherency of policies along Ireland’s coast from a climate adaptation perspective. Results suggest that many policies are developed in an ad-hoc fashion around the needs of single sectors. Improved policy coherence at all levels of governance is required to address this.

KEYWORDS:

• Maritime spatial planning
• climate adaptation
• coasts
• policy coherence
• Ireland

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Covid-19 restrictions came into effect at this point and we were forced to cancel workshop plans and resort to this method.

2. Youghal’s Blue and Green Environmental Network: https://youghalblueandgreennetwork.blogspot.com.

3. A greenway is defined by Sport Ireland as ‘a predominantly traffic free path, designated for use by pedestrians, cyclists and other non-motorised users such as wheelchair users, families with buggies etc.’: https://www.sportireland.ie/outdoors/greenways. Blueways follow waterways.

Additional information

Funding

The BCOMAR project was funded by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the Marine Institute in Ireland [project code 2018-CCRP-MS.59]. It is co-hosted by SFI Research Centre for Energy, Climate and Marine (MaREI, University College Cork) and the National University Ireland Galway.