‘A commons before the sea:’ climate justice considerations for coastal zone management

ABSTRACT

If climate change mitigation and adaptation are a human right, institutional change is needed that considers coastal ecosystem integrity as a common pool resource. Increasing risks in coastal zones necessitates adopting new and frequently controversial zoning, planning, and management practices, particularly as insurance programmes reform or require bailouts. In the U.S., current coastal policy frameworks employed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and state-level authorities incentivize defensive strategies, especially in high-value tourism destinations, despite critiques of inequity and longer-term evidence demonstrating that hardening shorelines shifts erosion patterns. Other coastal regions and developing countries that cannot afford defensive strategies – particularly rural, minority, and impoverished communities located adjacent to estuarine areas – rely heavily on ecosystem services for protection and will likely disproportionately face buyouts, forced relocation, and retreat as seas rise.

KEYWORDS:

• Collective action
• coastal resilience
• adaptation
• erosion
• sea level rise

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Matthew Jurjonas is currently a Fulbright-Garcia Robles U.S. Scholar at the Institute of Social Investigation at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. His research interests include sustainable rural development, community resilience for climate change, and climate justice issues in historically marginalized communities.

Erin Seekamp is an associate professor at NC State University. Her research focuses on partnerships, decision-making, and capacity building in relation to climate adaptation planning, community-based conservation, and conservation behaviours.

ORCID

Matthew Jurjonas http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1008-639X

Erin Seekamp http://orcid.org/0000-0001-5082-1921

Additional information

Funding

This work was inspired by and contributes to a research project partially supported by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Climate Program Office [(grant number NA11OAR4310148], [grant number NA16OAR4310163] to the Carolinas Integrated Sciences and Assessments (CISA) (project title: ‘Resilience Inclusion on the Coast: Exploring Sea Level Rise in Diverse Communities on the Albemarle Pamlico Peninsula of North Carolina’) and partially supported by the College of Natural Resources at NC State University’s Building Interdisciplinary Strengths initiative (project title: ‘Socio-Ecological Solutions to the Salinization of Albemarle-Pamlico Peninsula: An Interdisciplinary Assessment of Land and Water Resources and Community Climate Readiness’).