A Critical Analysis of Selected Policies and NBS for Climate Change, Coastal Erosion, and Flood Risk Management in Scotland

  • Kashif Shafiq

Student thesis: Master's ThesisMaster of Philosophy (MPhil)

Abstract

Human advancement on the coastlines is widespread and projected to rise over the upcoming years worldwide and particularly in Scotland. Due to the vicinity to the sea, coastal communities are vulnerable to climate change, strong storms, high rainfall, and sea level rise which head towards coastal erosion and flooding. Scotland’s average coastal erosion rates since the 1970s have doubled to 1.0 meter per year whilst accumulation rates have almost multiplied to 1.5 meter per year. If erosion coupled with climate change continues at the same rate and Scotland does not protect grey and natural coastal protection measures, then £1.2 billion of resources are at stake by 2050. Scotland is under-prepared for coastal protection and often responsive to damaging events such as coastal erosion and flooding. Therefore, there is a need for practical sustainable solutions for coastal development in Scotland to reduce the impacts of climate change, coastal erosion, and flooding. This thesis critically analyzed and evaluated selected Scotland selected policies such as CPA, 1949, FRM act, 2009, SPP, 2014, NPF3, 2014 and NPF4, 2021 and found that coastal erosion and severity of floods in Scotland is increasing despite coastal erosion policies are there to reduce the impacts of them. In addition, coastal management adaptation is not working at the same pace as coastal erosion is increasing. Furthermore, the adaptation actions are not nature based, whereas nature based solutions (NBS) are a form of “eco-innovation that specifically promote nature as a means for providing solutions to climate change (mitigation and adaptation), coastal erosion, flooding, air quality, loss of biodiversity, exposed coastlines and other endangered ecosystems, food insecurity and health, social and economic injustice (Kabisch et al., 2016; Nesshöver et al., 2017)”. The adoption of NBS in Scotland coastal erosion and flood policies is critically reviewed and found that, in most of the selected policies, there is no clear inclusion of NBS, how they will be designed, implemented, or monitored at local and national level for coastal development. The NPF4, 2021 is the only policy that highlights the use of NBS and natural resources to reduce the impacts of climate change and flooding, however, there is a major policy gap to define how, when, where, and which NBS will be planned, designed, implemented, and monitored. Hence, the Scottish Government, people, and businesses do not invest effectively to unleash the potential of NBS and use it for coastal erosion and flood management. Therefore, Scotland needs to finance and allocate a funding mechanism for NBS to alleviate the effects of coastal erosion and flooding. Based on a systematic critical literature review of selected policies and NBS, a generic, multidisciplinary framework is proposed with seven distinct steps for coastal development and adoption of NBS in Scotland. The framework underlines the gaps in the selected policies and gives a way forward to include NBS in the policies and emphasizes to identify best practice of NBS. The framework emphasizes a transparent funding mechanism, stakeholder engagement, SMART objectives, and effective monitoring system for evaluation of policies. The framework is distinctive in its kind as it offers seven steps for policy monitoring and NBS adoption. The proposed framework steps can be used to determine operational management between different stakeholders. This would also provide a logical process to evaluate the effects of climate change, coastal erosion, and floods, suggest explanations, and execute approaches for policies and NBS to lessen the impacts of these risks. To accomplish this, in future, key policy indicators can be developed to ensure transparency and track coastal development in Scotland.
Date of Award2023
Original languageEnglish
Awarding Institution
  • Glasgow Caledonian University
SupervisorSlobodan Mickovski (Supervisor), Craig Thomson (Supervisor) & Alejandro Gonzalez Ollauri (Supervisor)

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