Sustainable coastal social-ecological systems: how do we define “coastal”?

ABSTRACT

Coastal social-ecological systems (SES) are home to over 500 million people and one of the most productive and diverse ecosystems in the world. In recent years, coastal SES are experiencing severe threat from an increasing population, resource exploitation, and global environmental change (e.g. climate change), which have devastating societal impacts in coastal areas. Despite several global, national, and local initiatives, there is a growing consensus that coastal resources are depleting and increasing conflicts in coastal areas. Recognizing the global call to understand social–ecological interactions for implementing development practices, this special issue features a suite (seven) of articles advancing the understanding of the sustainability of social and ecological interactions within coastal areas through theoretical SES approaches and related analytical methods. In this editorial of this special issue, we also argued that coastal area needs to define from SES perspectives, which have received less attention compared to ecological and social perspectives. We hope that this special issue will stimulate the debate and further thinking of how coastal SES can be managed sustainably by conceptualizing and understanding the complex dynamics (interaction, feedback) of SES.

KEYWORDS:

• Social-ecological systems
• coastal systems
• definition of coastal area
• interdisciplinary

Acknowledgments

MSH and AK Gain gratefully acknowledge Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 796994 and 787419, respectively, under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme. KGR acknowledges the support of National Science Foundation award no. CNH-L-1716909. We thank Cristina Joss for her administrative support on the special issue. We also gratefully acknowledge anonymous reviewers for their valuable time to review papers published in this special issue.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the H2020 Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions [787419,796994]; National Science Foundation [CNH-L-1716909].