Abstract
Land management in coastal areas has to cope with impacts of climate change and sea level rise. In Germany, landscape plans assess and organize the spatial allocation of land use as an environmental contribution to general spatial planning. Collaborative planning processes are important to develop sustainable and ecosystem-based strategies to make coastal landscapes climate proof. However, there is little experience with collaborative processes in practical planning in Germany, and probably in other countries as well. This paper conducts an empirical case study in the low-lying coastal areas of northwest Germany. During a collaborative landscape planning process, four different ecosystem-based land management scenarios have been co-designed by regional experts and researchers. The participatory and iterative process included the development of scenario narratives to define planning goals, the use of land use elements and their relations to ecosystem services as planning entities in terms of indicators, the art-based illustrations of the different scenarios, and an evaluation and monitoring of the outcomes by regional experts. The decision-maker group decided on the so-called “actor-based” scenario, which contained freshwater retention areas (polders) to prevent potential uncontrolled flooding of the hinterland. This climate adaptation strategy has been implemented in the regional development plan of the county.
Highlights
The low-lying North Sea coastal areas have been subject to anthropogenic influences for centuries with events through extensive land reclamation schemes [1] combined with ongoing environmental and societal changes, resulting in competition and conflict concerning space, interests and resources [2,3,4]
Human induced changes in land management increased the vulnerability of the North Sea coastal communities, leading to reduced sediment flows and natural defense structures by building dikes, increased flood risks by building settlements in areas lying under sea level, increased surface water run-off with flash floods on impervious surfaces, or continuous land subsidence by drainage activities [5]
To further enhance the limited contribution of ecosystem services research on decision-making processes [33,34,35,36,37], this study focuses on a collaborative landscape planning approach to develop a regional climate adaptation strategy
Summary
The low-lying North Sea coastal areas have been subject to anthropogenic influences for centuries with events through extensive land reclamation schemes [1] combined with ongoing environmental and societal changes, resulting in competition and conflict concerning space, interests and resources [2,3,4]. To influence regional spatial planning at the county or state scale, scenario development should consider the regional environmental context and foster collaboration between the different land users [24,25] In this respect, scenario development can be placed in the ecosystem-based management framework, which Long et al [26] define as an interdisciplinary approach that harmonizes ecological, social and governance principle as well as different spatial and temporal scales, and includes scientific knowledge. We asked which land management alternatives might be suitable for a sustainable future of low-lying coastal landscapes, how co-design processes could be implemented, and how consensus between experts from various societal sectors could be reached To answer these questions, we started with the design of two alternative land management scenarios that required a relatively strong change in land management. The results of our study were eventually implemented in the formal regional spatial plan of the case study area [41]
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