examine the value of sustainable and intergrated approaches to coastal management

Examine the value of sustainable and integrated approaches to coastal management (10 marks)

Sustainable approaches to coastal management are usually soft engineering, they are defences which copy or work alongside natural systems and processes, this means ecosystems remain playing a key role. An example of sustainable coastal management would be at Barton on sea where they use managed retreat at the caravan site, Sustainable approaches are good because they are natural, cheap, environmentally friendly and bottom-up or community driven. However, they are also of a small scale and they usual do not last long (although at times they can be longer lasting) and also consideration has to be taken so that the defences do not give negative impacts on surrounding shorelines, e.g. Bournemouth groins starve Barton on sea of sediment.

Integrated coastal management may include soft options as well as hard defences. This is where the whole of a coast within a sediment cell is managed - it also focuses in not just sea but land to make plans more sustainable. Numerous players/organisations are involved in shoreline management plans – this can be a negative because it can be difficult to coordinate and manage, decisions making is harder/longer, there could be a lack of consistency in the collection and storage of data, its hard to choose which players opinions are more important and also political boundaries don’t match natural ones.
ICZM can be good because the plans are more sustainable and longer lasting, However it can also be very expensive. An example of integrated coastal management is at ‘Beachy head’ to ‘south foreland’ where they use numerous strategies within holding the line and managed retreat, for example they use hard engineering at ‘Jury’s Gap’ to ‘The Suttons’ to improve the standard of protection.