Stronger Shores' story
"The Stronger Shores – Marine Habitats Protecting Communities Project", known as "Stronger Shores" for short, is one of the 25 pioneering projects funded by the Government's Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme. Innovation is central to this Programme, which seeks to develop and test ground-breaking interventions to improve resilience to flood and coastal erosion risk.
As part of innovative action on flooding and coastal change, Stronger Shores aims to improve understanding of the coastal protection value of kelp, seagrass and oyster reefs along the North East coast of England between Northumberland and North Yorkshire. Specifically, it aims to quantify how nature-based solutions, used to restore and/or create marine habitat, reduce erosion and flood risk.
By trialling cutting edge wave attenuation and sediment transport monitoring, evidencing and documenting all learning in a practitioner's toolkit, Stronger Shores will provide a route map to coastal resilience, for other risk management authorities to follow. Not only that, Stronger Shores also seeks to better understand the wider role these habitats play in adapting to climate change and biodiversity management.
The project is currently in a 5-year delivery phase (that started in September 2022). To ensure that local needs are taking into account and to help foster community ownership and long-term commitment, Stronger Shores will collaborate with stakeholders and local communities throughout the entire process.
Useful learnings from Stronger Shores
The Stronger Shores project pilots marine-based solutions for coastal protection along our coastline. That's a key word to remember - pilot. We are seeing what works and what doesn't and learning from the results - so our advice would be to be open to trying, to testing and refining as you go. Keep an open mind and if something doesn't work, that's ok! Learn from it and try another idea.
Our findings will help to provide a model for other local authorities to use in their future risk management strategies, benefiting not only the region but the nation's approach to adapting to the climate crisis.
Stronger Shores' metrics
Stronger Shores will contribute to local authority climate emergency plans by supporting a new 'market-place' for marine nature-based projects; which in turn will support clean growth by providing nature-based carbon-offsetting solutions, enhancement of the natural capital and the creation of new jobs, skills and income streams for the nature-based sector across the North East region and beyond.
