Abstract
Developing countries face risks from coastal hazards that are being amplified by climate change. The selection of effective adaptation interventions to manage these risks requires a sufficiently accurate assessment of the coastal hazard at a given location. Yet challenges remain in terms of understanding local coastal risks given the coarseness of global wave models and the paucity of locally scaled data in most developing countries, including Small Island Developing States (SIDS) like Vanuatu. This paper aims to examine the differences in hazard assessment and adaptation option selections arising from analyses using globally versus locally scaled data on coastal processes. As a case study, we focused on an eroding cliff face in Port Resolution on Tanna Island, Vanuatu, which is of concern to the local community and government authorities. The coastal process modeling revealed that the global wave data generated unrealistically high predictions of wave height within Port Resolution Bay. Expensive engineering adaptations designed to provide coastal protection were therefore likely to fail in preventing ongoing cliff erosion. In this case, the best adaptation solution involves changing land use to revegetate and help stabilize the cliff top. Our case study highlights the importance of accurate hazard assessment, especially in data-poor regions where the extrapolation of global datasets and models in the absence of local data can result in poor adaptation decision-making. Furthermore, the multidisciplinary approach applied here can be applied in other data-poor regions to strengthen analyses exploring the benefits of local adaptation interventions.
Highlights
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have a long history of resilience and adaptation to environmental variability but remain among the most vulnerable countries to the manifest impacts of anthropogenic climate change, including natural disasters (Barnett and Campbell 2010)
Sanford and Gao (2018) found that while wave energy could have a significant influence on erosion, many other local factors such as water levels, wind, and vegetation bordering the shoreline are important that require drawing upon a wide range of datasets when undertaking local coastal hazard assessments and evaluating adaptation options
Wave energy around Port Resolution was found to be highest during the wet season, when tropical cyclones are most prevalent
Summary
Small Island Developing States (SIDS) have a long history of resilience and adaptation to environmental variability but remain among the most vulnerable countries to the manifest impacts of anthropogenic climate change, including natural disasters (Barnett and Campbell 2010). Sanford and Gao (2018) found that while wave energy could have a significant influence on erosion, many other local factors such as water levels, wind, and vegetation bordering the shoreline (mangroves, marshy shorelines, bank shorelines) are important that require drawing upon a wide range of datasets when undertaking local coastal hazard assessments and evaluating adaptation options While this can be more readily achieved in areas with high-quality data, there is a notable scarcity of data from developing countries and a lack of geographical balance in the literature on observed coastline changes across natural and managed systems. The Pacific Islands are often poorly represented in global analyses of risks regarding coastal processes due to an overreliance on the coarse representation of physical principles, and sometimes they can even be excluded from global analyses due to the lack of data or resolution
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