Guest editorial on coastal adaptation

Abstract

Coastal adaptation has become an increasingly important area of study as the significance of climate change rises and coastal hazards continue to damage coastal space and communities. Coastal adaptation solely for climate change is not possible given the financial, infrastructural, and political constraints. A more realistic approach is to use existing methods and strategies of coastal adaptation that inform and meet new challenges of climate-change-induced vulnerabilities. The IPCC has, since 1990, incorporated adaptation methods and strategies on coastal erosion and inundation in its assessments and has identified three generic adaptation options: retreat, accommodate, or protect. This special issue divides these options into engineering, vegetation, and policy solutions based on their respective disciplinary and science background. It draws from five papers presented at a symposium entitled “Coastal Adaptation,” held at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). This issue is timely since increased attention is now being paid to managing the risks of extreme events by combining traditional disaster management strategies with climate change adaptation. Indicative of this is the forthcoming IPCC Special Report on managing climate extremes. The objective of the special issue is to discuss the roles of these three major solutions and offer a preliminary assessment of tradeoffs and synergies. They are applied to a study of the economics of adaptation, with insurance policy operating as a major underlying factor in assessing and managing risk , and New York City serving as a case study for coastal adaptation planning with sea-level rise considerations. Coastal adaptation to hazards has been relatively well developed building on coastal engineering and management practices (Nicholls et al. 2007a, b). A historical