������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ��

Dangers to life on the coast

Already half the world’s population lives within 60 km of the sea, and most large cities are found . But life on the coast now comes at a high cost, with a real danger to lives and livelihoods. The changing global climate is bringing more frequent and severe weather events such as wind, larger waves and storm surges. Erosion will decrease habitable land area. Rising sea levels will be especially problematic – if not disastrous – for low-elevation coastal zones and small island states, which (compared to 0.6 billion in 2000).

Creating an eco-buffer to support disaster risk reduction (DRR)

The need for protecting coastal communities from climate induced disasters is very high (e.g. ). Ninety percent of recorded major disasters caused by natural hazards from 1995 to 2015 were linked to climate and weather including floods, storms, heatwaves and droughts.��

While some coastal areas are in need of hard infrastructure, healthy mangrove forests (among other coastal ecosystems such as seagrass beds, coral reefs and saltmarshes) are proven to function as buffer zones between land and sea. The Nature Conservancy and Wetlands International, under the project, recently published on mangroves’ function in mitigating floods and coastal erosion through reducing wave energy and facilitating sediment capture. Healthy mangrove systems could allow for the land to keep up with sea level rise through vertical build-up of soil layers. Unfortunately, the protection mangroves offered us from the raging ocean has been – to a vast extent – .

Ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA)

The initial response of many was to build massive concrete infrastructure such as seawalls to keep the waves out. A published on showed that much money is still pumped into ‘hard’ or ‘grey’ coastal infrastructure. The U.S. alone spends 400 times more on coastal grey than green infrastructure around the world. But these seemingly indestructible grey infrastructures are often expensive and come with high maintenance costs. In addition, waves can get 2 – 4 times bigger when they reflect off a hard structure, leading to increased erosion in front of the structure and to eventual collapse. We are only now learning that at least part of the solution was there all along – coastal protection provided by nature – a method generally referred to as ecosystem-based adaptation (EbA). ��

Some cost-benefit evaluations, like that of the for , are underway and are arguing for complementing or even replacing grey with green infrastructure for coastal protection. Besides lower , green infrastructures provide additional economic benefits from industries such from tourism and fisheries. ��

Coastal guardians in action

Nature-based solutions can be applied in many very different ecosystems for different climate related disaster risks. The EPIC Project (������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ�� and ) is demonstrating this through various community projects from tackling droughts in Burkina Faso to coastal erosion and floods in Thailand ().

Mangrove restoration projects for improving coastal resilience are underway in , particularly in countries like the , Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Thailand, which are heavily affected by flooding and sea level rise. Because mangrove restoration is simultaneously climate adaptation and mitigation (see previous blog), a country’s mangrove restoration efforts can be applied towards achieving their sustainable development goals.

In the interest of coastal communities around the world, let’s ensure our coastal guardians of the future come in green, and not only grey, armour.

This article series on��mangrove restoration��is written by Juliet Blum and Dorothée Herr from ������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ��'s Global Marine and Polar Programme with the support of Germany's International Climate Initiative () through the��������ϲʿ�������ֳ�ֱ�� Global Forest and Climate Change Programme.��