CMAP Project: Working towards interdisciplinary and creative responses to coastal climate adaptation
On 25th – 27th August Chelsea Beardsley from the Coastal Monitoring and Adaptation Planning (CMAP) team at Climate NI attended and presented at the Coastal Transitions Conference at Mary Immaculate College, Limerick.
The conference theme was ‘Beyond Blue Economy: Critical, Practical and Ethical Directions for Coastal Prosperity’ and was attended by researchers and practitioners working on marine and coastal research. The conference had a global perspective to adaptation including example of research undertaken in Ghana, South Africa, Ireland and the UK. The presentations featured lightning talks followed by lengthy group discussion on original research on: fragmented governance approaches to adaptation and the reproduction of ‘vulnerability’ in the governance landscape in Ghana; the definition of ‘co-location’ currently used in NI, UK and RoI policy documents; the analysis of governance failures related to mangrove loss in Ghana; trying to overcome contestation between boundaries (NI/ROI) and move towards transformative coastal resilience in Lough Foyle, amongst other presentations.
Key discussion points with the group were around ownership: particularly in relation to aquaculture industries, but also property and even nature itself around coastal regions. Another discussion point was the role of arts-based approaches and the use of storytelling in different projects which can help communities and planners with better adaptation planning and preserve the identity and place in the face of unknown and unrecognisable future changes.
The keynote for the session was delivered by Dr Christina Kelly (Queen’s University Belfast, recently moved to Office of Environmental Protection and pictured below) on her experience with projects around marine planning and coastal adaptation. She looked at the role of transition studies to foster societal change and system innovation in coastal settings. The key challenges she noted in transitions studies and her work were the long-term nature of the problems, but often short-term projects or solutions, and a lack of creativity in methods of thinking about the future.
The final workshop at the conference was the Marine Spatial Planning Workshop (pictured below) delivered by Dr Heather Ritchie (Queen’s University Belfast). This workshop uses a large board of an imaginary sea-space where participants are put into teams and assigned roles (such as offshore renewable energy developer, oil and gas exec, tourism industry). Each team is tasked with meeting objectives such as the ‘30×30’ target of 30% of area designated as Marine Protected Area by 2030, and a renewable energy target in their zone. The game has been played with planners in government to show how difficult spatial planning is physically (on the board/on land and sea itself) and socially (dealing with conflicting interest groups).
Coastal Transitions is a network of researchers working on coastal transitions research and the blue economy. Information about the network, as well as previous outputs from the yearly conference and workshop series can be found below:
https://www.coastaltransitions.org/
On 31st August – 2nd September, the MESSAGE (Marine & Energy Social Sciences & Humanities Interdisciplinary Research Group) held a coastal writing retreat and workshop in Fethard on Sea, County Wexford. The retreat brought together researchers in different disciplines focused on marine and coastal research. Chelsea Beardsley from the CMAP team at Climate NI was selected by the MESSAGE team to attend this retreat.
The retreat included dedicated writing time for participants and two workshops. The first was a ‘Creative Writing Walkshop’ guided by novelist and academic Paula McGrath from UCD at a local beach. The group were guided by Paula to use their senses and the setting to encourage reflective creative writing on nature, change, the climate crisis and the ways the spaces they call ‘home’ have been transformed by climate change.
The second workshop focused on interdisciplinary wicked marine problems including coastal erosion, offshore renewable energy, marine protected areas and deep-sea fishing. In teams, participants were tasked with responding with a proposal for an interdisciplinary project focused on one of these wicked problems to pitch to the Marine Institute. Using examples from the CMAP project as a guide, the coastal erosion team mapped the current issues and affected stakeholders for coastal erosion to work towards a proposal around integrated governance for coastal adaptation (see image below of mind map). The other groups used their backgrounds to propose projects that featured creative writing, participatory workshops with communities, and theatre pieces to engage communities living with the challenges imposed by changing marine and coastal issues or developments.
The MESSAGE Research Group is an interdisciplinary group hosted by the UCD Earth Institute with support from the iCRAG Research Ireland Centre for Applied Geosciences. The group have a particular focus on coastal, marine and renewable energy challenges. More information can be found here:
https://www.ucd.ie/earth/message/
Organically, both the conference and workshops highlighted the need for interdisciplinary and more creative responses for more just and effective governance of oceans and coastal spaces. The discussions, lessons, and networks built through both activities will contribute to the work and outputs for the CMAP team. The CMAP project is an EU-funded PEACEPLUS project to help understand the climate change impacts on Irish coasts and empower communities to better adapt to some of these impacts. The Climate NI team contribute to engaging, informing and empowering local and cross-border communities in climate adaptation plans in Cushendun (NI), Dundrum (N) and Strandhill (RoI).
Want to learn more about CMAP or further outputs from the project on coastal adaptation?
Further information can be found on the project homepage through Ulster University below:
And outputs from the CNI team will be updated here:
