Project Background

Coastal Change Adaptation Planning in Aberdeenshire

Adapting to coastal change is complex and requires changing the way that we think about traditional coastal management. While adaptation is not a new concept, the Plans developed will be and will represent the first step in the process. Relying on traditional coastal risk management approaches is no longer sufficient to protect communities against these risks. Instead, it is important to become more resilient and to adapt to a changing coast through combined coastal risk management and climate resilient development planning. To enable this, it is important to make proactive combined decisions which provide long-term space for the coast to naturally respond. This is imperative to avoid tying future generations to maintaining unsustainable and costly approaches to coastal management. Developing and implementing an Adaptation Framework now to address this is critical.

These CCAPs will be the first step in this process. They will aim to identify the long-term trajectory of the Aberdeenshire coast and identify proactive actions that can support this journey. They will provide time to develop risk assessments and monitoring for the longer-term. They need to consider all the potential pressures on the coast, including erosion, flooding, aging coastal defences, along with past, present, and future land management decisions. The sustainable nature of CCAPs means they are living documents, that allow for plans and actions to evolve and improve with greater data availability and understanding through time.