Abstract
Coastal zone management is a pressing matter, especially in developing countries, which are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change. Human systems are underrepresented in the vast array of indicators aimed at assisting coastal zone management decisions. Clearly, there is room to better capture natural and human system relationships and interactions in coastal area assessments. A case in point is the well-known Coastal Hazard Wheel (CHW). Hence three main objectives guide this paper: (i) Analysing the existing set of indicator themes and categories in coastal areas; (ii) Contrasting this set of indicators with the perceived needs of local coastal stakeholders from a developing country; and (iii) Proposing indicator categories to be included as part of a systemic coastal zone management framework. To this end, we undertook an automated content analysis of 1116 peer-reviewed articles on the subject matter. The analysis and a stringent set of criteria led to 40 articles that were reviewed to identify suitable indicators. In parallel, field research in Ghana allowed for a set of indicators from the quadruple helix stakeholders operating in coastal zones to be elicited. Contrasting the two sets of indicators resulted in three situations. The first involves 14 indicator categories that co-occur in the literature and the detected needs from local coastal stakeholders. In the second situation, the categories mentioned in the literature were those not mentioned at local level. A third situation appeared when the local coastal stakeholders mentioned categories of indicators that were not identified in the reviewed literature. After examining each case, we advocate for the indicators in the first situation to be incorporated into the current coastal indicator monitoring frameworks (for example by upgrading the CHW). The unique contribution of this paper is the combination of literature and stakeholder-based indicator sub-categories that should be added to the current set of coastal monitoring frameworks.
Highlights
More than half of the world’s population live up to 200 km inland from the coastline, a number that is set to double by 2025 (Inacio et al, 2018; Micallef et al, 2018)
Three main objectives guide this paper: (i) Analysing the existing set of indicator themes and categories in coastal areas; (ii) Contrasting this set of indicators with the perceived needs of local coastal stakeholders from a developing country; and (iii) Proposing indicator categories to be included as part of a systemic coastal zone management framework
Ghana is a suitable location for our enquiry as it fits perfectly within the empirical criteria we used to select the articles, i.e. Ghana is a coastal area in a developing country that is heavily affected by climate change impacts
Summary
More than half of the world’s population live up to 200 km inland from the coastline, a number that is set to double by 2025 (Inacio et al, 2018; Micallef et al, 2018). Rodríguez-Labajos environment, economic activities (e.g., tourism, aquaculture, fisheries) and the formal and informal institutions that organize human activities (e.g., policies, laws, customs, norms, and culture) These human systems are critical as they drive many of the impacts (both environmental and social) and the changes that are seen at the local level in coastal areas. Its proponents already detected the need to add the human system to their framework: “supplementing the physical CHW assess ment with socioeconomic data may in many cases be relevant for improving the information base for coastal planners and managers This would provide CHW users with a combined picture of physical hazards and societal activities which could be relevant for supporting long-term planning decisions.”(Rosendahl Appelquist and Halsnæs (2015):PP 9). This paper provides the methods to which this investigation was undertaken followed by a section on the results, the discussion and the final conclusions that were drawn up and the suggestions for further research in this field
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