Report produced by Professor Frank Chambers

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Contextual summary
Includes material from Provocateurs' statements supplied by:
Dr Rhoda C Ballinger, incorporating comments from the Severn Estuary Strategy*
Medea Gravelle, Co-ordinator, Dorset Coast Forum
Richard Horrocks, Regional Flood Defence Manager, Environment Agency South West Region

The coast of the South West region is one of the region's major assets. The coastal zone includes highly diverse ecosystems and is a focus of intense and increasing human activity. Of the likely impacts of potential climate change, sea-level rise and changes in the frequency and/or intensity of extreme events are likely to cause the most concern for coastal areas. Consequently, the most significant issues may arise along stretches of developed coast that lie close to mean sea level and/or that are vulnerable to flooding from storm surges, or stretches of the coast that are vulnerable to wave attack.

The prevailing wind direction is from the south-west and so this region receives most of its incoming weather from the moist Atlantic. South-westerly facing coastlines, such as at Porthleven, take the full force of Atlantic storms and waves. More dynamic, stormier, conditions are forecast with Climate Change, which will have two main effects: higher surge tides and stronger wind speeds. The most obvious impact can be expected on rates of coastal erosion and tidal flooding. Most of Devon and Cornwall has a rock coastline but there are still plenty of coastal communities huddled just above high water and along estuaries. The northern coastline becomes progressively softer from Somerset to Gloucestershire, with large areas below highest sea level and therefore dependent upon coastal defences. This coastline also has the highest tidal range in Europe - over 10 metres at Avonmouth. The cliffs in Dorset tend to be soft and so liable to slips and erosion. The tidal range reduces eastwards, being barely 1 metre at Christchurch. This diversity of geology, tidal range and exposure will affect locations differently.

However, the coastal zone is not an easily definable area, and could not exist without interchanges and inputs from inland. For this reason, many of the issues discussed in the other workshops will have a direct or indirect bearing on the coast. Therefore changes to agricultural practices, land management patterns, the economy, the enjoyment and leisure industry and tourism will impact on coastal and inland areas alike.

The Workshop:Issues raised

The overwhelming message from the Workshop was a sense of frustration with what was seen as a piecemeal response to the principal issues. There was a sense that the *Note A complete version of the Consultation Draft for the Strategy for the Severn Estuary (January 2001) can be found on the Severn Estuary Strategy website: www.severnestuarystrategy.org.uk appropriate mechanisms are not there for things to happen; that there is not the right 'toolkit' to enable appropriate responses; and that fundamental land reform would be required to overcome such sensitive issues as compensation payments for those affected by coastal erosion or by increased flooding.

The issues raised were manifold: from fisheries, to tourism; and from energy generation to issues concerned with the vulnerability of existing infrastructure, such as the fact that the only rail artery to West Devon and Cornwall presently is sited along a vulnerable stretch of the Dawlish coast. It was suggested from the floor that there was a need for a regional focus to the issues of coastal erosion; that the response to the threat of increased coastal erosion should be strategic; that the policy should be to pay for 'goods' (positive benefits) not 'bads'; and that in order to evaluate the relative threats there was a need for an inventory of the total coastal resource.

Mitigation
Mitigation was defined in the Workshop as measures designed to reduce the causes of climate change, not to mitigate the effects of climate change. One of the provocateurs intimated that there was nothing in the coastal zone that could be done by way of mitigating climate change, but this challenging statement prompted a number of positive suggestions from the floor, including

(1) Coastal-based energy systems, such as wind, tidal and wave power generation. These would be based on flow resources, and so not generate the vast quantities of carbon dioxide that are emitted from fossil-fuel power stations.

(2) Integrated developments, including schemes that produce energy locally, and which are sustainable without over-reliance on fossil fuels. In the context of potential energy generation schemes, the long-proposed 'Severn Barrage' was mentioned as a possibility, albeit one that potentially had far-reaching ecological effects. Any barrage, however, had to be 'sustainable'.

(3) Encouragement of home-based tourism, which would obviate the need for so many British tourists to travel abroad, and so reduce the carbon dioxide emissions from aviation fuel. However, it was recognised that to make sufficient reduction in fuel emissions, the home-based tourists would need to travel to and from the region by rail (requiring major upgrade to existing rail infrastructure and capacity) rather than all arriving by road.

Adaptation
Adaptation to climate change required first the need to recognise that coastal erosion was a long-term natural phenomenon, and that flooding was also natural. Both, however, could be exacerbated by human activities (such as groyne protection for one stretch of coast depriving another of its protective sediments; or land-use practices that increased the rate and quantity of run-off and so intensified flood peaks in the tidal zone during high tides). Measures to adapt to scenarios of climate change needed to recognise that some coastal erosion was inevitable and so could not be defended against, and that managed retreat in some localities was a more realistic solution than continual renewal and rebuilding of damaged coastal defences.

Measures involving adaptation included
(1) Identification of 'priority' areas for 'hard' protection
(2) The safeguarding of major urban areas and infrastructure
(3) Adoption of policy advice not to build on floodplains or too close to high water mark
(4) Promotion of 'appropriate' development that does not exacerbate existing problems
(5) Development of regional strategic management of the coastal zone.

Barriers and Uncertainties
During the Workshop, the South-west Region was regarded as a whole, but it is recognised that the coast is of a different character in say, the northern part of the region, from that in the south-east (see above). Nevertheless, the strength of opinion was for development of a regional perspective that could embrace the whole coastal zone of the region, rather than just a part. The principal barriers to developing a co-ordinated response were thought to be the lack of a regional perspective on the coastal zone; the need for strategic environmental assessment of the risks and of the opportunities; and the lack of mechanisms to deal with the major issues that were raised. Too often, for example, potential solutions would not get past simple project-specific Cost-Benefit analyses, because the terms of reference were defined too narrowly.

Major uncertainties included the reliability of the future-climate scenarios, and in particular the likelihood of increased severity of severe storms and the magnitude of sea-level rise.

Research
There was not a consensus on the research needs, but the following were raised:
(1) a need for a strategic environmental assessment of the threats to the coastal zone
(2) a need for research on the fragmented environments of the coastal zone
(3) a desirability for an inventory of the total coastal resource
(4) a need for a regional strategic response, rather than piecemeal responses.

Professor Frank Chambers
Geography and Environmental Management Research Unit
Cheltenham & Gloucester College of Higher Education
March 2001