published a paper titled “Coastal Risk Reduction and Resilience: Us - ing the Full Array of Measures”, which set out capabilities and rec - ommended projects to help reduce risks to coastal areas and improve resilience to coastal hazards through an integrated planning approach. Since then, a growing community of engineers, scientists, practitioners and researchers across numerous disciplines and organisations have come together to design projects focused on coastal risk reduction through a combination of natural and engineered systems. Unfortu - nately, many of these are now collecting dust, waiting in a long line of projects seeking funding, further stymied by entrenched cultural and infrastructural systems and processes. Moving forward, key decision makers must encourage more com - munity awareness and funding dedicated to this space. Beyond the environmental benefits, there is huge potential in the job and market opportunities associated with the construction of climate-resilient infrastructure – not to mention the money to be saved on insurance. Unfortunately, in the U.S., we’re still battling a historic perception in financial markets and there are still members of the government that think of climate change as a social issue, rather than an economic tick- ing time bomb. More innovative thinking around how to finance climate resilience projects is also important. There are plenty more approaches to financ - ing than the typical routes of either slogging away for government money or increasing taxes. Public-private partnership models is one great example currently being trialled. No matter the road we must take to get there, re-building coastal resil- ience will be a vital part of any climate-adaptive future. A layered resilience approach promotes risk reduction, enhances eco- systems, and fosters stronger communities. Living shorelines, like that being created off Staten Island, help to manage erosion and re-establish natural biodiversity. They also prove that humankind and nature do not have to always be in conflict. The future will be centred on redis - covering this union and enshrining it in our infrastructure, processes, research, and education. Of course, addressing coastal risk and resilience must come in tandem with multiple other adaptive and proactive solutions. We need cross- disciplinary collaboration between architects, engineers, and ecolo- gists, and resilience planning in coastal and flood protection design that considers all environmental and social elements at play. But above all we need action now, which means solutions that are quickly and easily deployable, and that help ecosystems to cope with the effects of climate change that are no longer in question. When discussing the climate crisis, we often hear people talking about ‘turning the ship around’ or at least minimising the damage – but we have to acknowledge the fact that a minimum 1.5 degree increase in global temperatures is now inevitable.
A recent comment on a LinkedIn post about a project to create man- made living, growing breakwaters off Staten Island to account for problematic coastal erosion asked ‘Why not spend the money on actu- ally reducing the impact we are causing and fix the disease. A healthy patient doesn’t need life support.’ It’s true, a healthy patient does not need life support. Unfortunately, the world is not a healthy patient. Is this regrettable? 100 times yes. Is it a fact we have to live with? Also yes. And, as the actors accountable for the overharvesting and pollution that eroded the earth’s natural barriers, it is our responsibility to help these damaged ecosystems adapt. The Living Breakwaters project off Staten Island is a great example of an adaptation project helping to future-proof our environment. Led by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development as part of their Rebuild by Design competition, the project is lowering marine mattresses into Raritan Bay to serve as both a habitat for marine life, and underwater walls that will absorb and dissipate energy, rather than blocking or reflecting it. The unique initiative has already reduced shoreline erosion trends and reduced wave energy in front of residential areas and is starting to seed benefits to the local marine ecology and shoreline maintenance. Another great example of adaptation at work is in New York, where the race is on against rising sea levels and increasingly frequent ex - treme weather events. A project currently in motion, spearheaded by the New York City Economic Development Corporation, is preparing, installing, and deploying interim flood protection measures (IFPM) for vulnerable sites around the city’s five boroughs – a response to Super - storm Sandy, which caused severe flooding when it hit in 2012. The project’s necessity was further highlighted in the recent flash flooding that followed Hurricane Ida, which claimed 14 lives in New York. The passing of President Biden’s infrastructure bill, which includes $47 billion to help communities prepare for the increasing frequency and severity of extreme weather events, is a much-needed acknowl - edgement of the importance of coastal resilience projects like these. A lot of the innovation required to create and deploy such initiatives is already there. Almost a decade ago, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Coastal resilience in the U.S.: the importance of short- termadaptation for a sickworld
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april 2022
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