In England alone, 520,000 properties are currently in areas at risk of damage from coastal flooding. Coastal areas can be better protected from the effects of climate change and rising sea levels if nature-based solutions are used, or if they are combined with typical engineering coastal defences like concrete sea walls and breakwaters. What are some of the ways that we can protect our shores with the power of nature?
If you want to read or listen to a couple of inspiring examples about protecting our shores from coastal flooding, look below. If you are already involved in a similar project, jump here if you want to do something bigger.
Inspiration read
Nature based solutions to protect communities from coastal flooding
Stronger Shores
Stronger Shores is a collaborative project in the northeast of England, involving South Tyneside Council, universities and nature trusts. The team has turned to the hidden habitats below the waves – seagrass meadows, kelp forests and oyster reefs – for solutions that can make big stretches of the British coastline and communities stronger in the face of flooding, coastal erosion and climate change. Marine experts are learning firsthand how these habitats are reducing erosion, stabilising shorelines and supporting local wildlife, in addition to capturing more carbon. Replicable in other coastal areas, they are creating a flood and coastal resilience practitioner’s toolkit for marine habitat restoration.
Our Future Coast
In another big collaboration, Our Future Coast is developing a set of 14 natural ‘buffer strips’ to increase the coastal resilience of vulnerable hot spots in the northwest of England. Creating and protecting natural coastal buffer zones, with their rich vegetation, provides multiple benefits (beyond reducing coastal erosion and flood risk). These include improved biodiversity, water quality and carbon capture. For example, Hest Bank outside Lancaster is one of these buffer strips, where local people and volunteers have been installing wooden and plant structures to speed up the regeneration of the protective saltmarsh.
Making Space For Sand
Making Space For Sand is an ambitious coastal project looking at sandy beach dune systems to protect our shores, across 40 different locations in Cornwall. Sand dunes are important because they can absorb wave energy and they are natural sea defences, but this form of shoreline protection is only possible and effective where there is enough store of sand. Without space along our coastal fringes for these sand dunes to roll back and build up, the rates of erosion can increase dramatically and compound the risks faced by communities located behind them. Surveying and tracking all 40 systems, the cross-sector team is developing a resilience plan and toolkit that will help in making sufficient space for natural sand dune defences along the Cornish coast and elsewhere.
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Inspiration listen
Do Something Bigger
In this, the first episode of the Carbon Copy Podcast series, Do Something Bigger, we introduce our year-long campaign: 25 Big Local Actions in 2025.
Do something bigger
From growing and protecting natural coastal defences to integrating and deploying them as core assets in our coastal infrastructure, there’s a lot that different organisations across multiple sectors can do by working together on something bigger.
Plant seagrass
Like most nature-based solutions, seagrass offers multiple benefits. In addition to reducing erosion and significant carbon capture, it also improves our coastal water quality by filtering pollutants and sediments. Support seagrass restoration projects – like Seawilding in Scotland and Seagrass Ocean Rescue in Wales – so these initiatives can be replicated on a large scale along our coastline. If left undisturbed and pollution free, seagrass beds will persist for hundreds of years, and act as permanent ‘blue carbon’ storage. To hear more about the amazing ability of restored seagrass beds to filter water and sequester carbon, and how you can get involved with rewilding our shores, listen to the Carbon Copy Podcast All Nature: Sowing the Sea
Integrate coastal defences
While coastal nature-based solutions clearly have huge potential and benefits, they are not yet the norm and are often treated as an extra to conventional engineering solutions. In research meta-analysis by the University of York, measures which support or enrich natural coastal solutions and hybrid measures were found to be more cost-effective than simple engineering defences, and hybrid measures provided the highest reduction in potential hazards. The added benefit of carbon savings rather than emissions should also be taken into account, when designing nature-based and natural measures! In whatever capacity you have as a decision-maker in the planning and building of coastal infrastructure, let’s do something more innovative and nature-led.
Practice regenerative ocean farming
Regenerative ocean farming – pioneered by Greenwave and practised by Car-y-Mor in Pembrokeshire and others – means growing seaweed and shellfish (oysters, mussels, clams) in many small coastal underwater gardens of a few acres each (and not constructing more industrial salmon farms). This zero-input farming uses no fertiliser, pesticides, or fresh water. Seaweeds and shellfish don’t need to be fed; they grow with just sunlight and the nutrients and plankton already in seawater. The appeal to prospective ocean farmers is the low maintenance of these ocean plants and animals; the wider appeal is that they improve local water quality and create habitats for other species.
Discover more
Create space for nature
Plant more trees
Restore peatlands
Rewild land
Nature
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