Coastal Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerabilities - Climate ...

108 Coastal Impacts, Adaptation, and VulnerabilitiesInstitutional STRUCTURE/MECHANISMS.It will be crucial to imbue all of our decisions (research, management, communications,and policy) with clear recognition as to the role climate change will play in their successor failure, and to incorporate uncertainty about the future into our planning.Hansen & Hoffman, 2010: pg. 33As discussed in the prior sections, consideration of climate change in coastal resourcemanagement and restoration efforts is growing in practice through a range of focusedand exploratory efforts; however, in order to realize consideration of climate change,policies and/or directives are necessary to institutionalize consideration of climatechange in coastal management and restoration. Policies and directives have been established,such as the Maryland Department of Natural Resources’ Climate Change Policythat directs the agency to “proactively pursue, design and construct habitat restorationprojects to enhance the resilience of bay, aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems to the impactsof climate change and/or increase on-site carbon sequestration” (Maryland Departmentof Natural Resources, 2010: pg 14). Many more directives like this one will beneeded, particularly at the national scale, in order for climate resilience to be realized.Technical INFORMATION. Understanding the interactions between climatechange and the range of physical, chemical, and biological characteristics of coastal resourcesis complex (see Chapters 2 and 3 for an explanation of the nature of these complexities).Likewise, ascertaining how to incorporate consideration of climate changeinto coastal resource management and restoration efforts is difficult. Although sizablescientific confidence supports the need for activities that reduce non-climate stressors,the effectiveness of the measures that help systems adapt to climate change is not as evident,and their consideration requires a clear understanding of how a system functionsand how it might be affected by climate change (Julius & West, 2008). In recognition ofthis need, a number of organizations, including non-profit, federal, state, and regionalpartners, have begun to develop frameworks (Figure 5-1) and exploratory guides to supportthe integration of climate change considerations into the restoration efforts (Glick etal., 2011; Hansen & Hoffman, 2010; Kane et al., 2011).Valuing ECOSYSTEM SERVICES. Recently, emphasis has been placed on the servicesthat ecosystems provide, such as storm surge buffers, clean water, and migratorybird habitat. In some cases an actual dollar value can be placed on the services provided,which has created new incentives for financial investments by the government, private,and corporate sectors in coastal resource protection and restoration (Cooley & Olander,2011). When managed effectively, protection or restoration of coastal ecosystems canprovide mutual societal, ecological, and financial co-benefits. This is an important newconcept because connecting the ecosystem services provided for greenhouse gas mitigationpurposes with adaptation needs is now conceptually possible. This may result innew mechanisms to fund costly adaptation strategies; for example, salt marsh restorationdesigned to be eligible for financial benefits such as carbon offset credits must demonstrate,among other factors, a life-expectancy of 75-100 years. In order to meet thesecriteria, the project design must take into account such external forces as sea-level rise,