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Adaptation to climate change is an increasing priority for coastal management. European Union and Member State adaptation policies and strategies have been promulgated but associated with minimal delivery of adaptation interventions and tangible gains in resilience. Generic stages of adaptation and barriers to adaptation have been identified; various tools or instruments have potential to strengthen adaptation delivery. Scenario analysis is one tool which provides a description of alternate possible future states and has been used to support adaptation planning. This work aims to assess how readily those engaged in coastal management decision-making are able to develop and utilise scenarios of change for adaptation and whether it represents a ‘best practice’ approach for adaptation planning. The scenario analysis facilitated many aspects of the adaptation process, which ultimately led to a tractable adaptation strategy being produced. However, pathways for integrated approaches to co-deliver adaptation were less evident. The planning horizon, much beyond usual governmental budget and project cycles, the need for trade-offs and embedded institutional constraints meant that a majority of those who had started out on the scenario analysis became disengaged by its conclusion. The analysis undertaken concurs with theoretical work which projects a tail-off of the benefits of scenario analysis at the later stages of the adaptation cycle. The work concludes that scenario analysis offers the potential to overcome key barriers to adaptation progress. However, the gains may be limited as the institutional drivers for longer-term pro-active planning may be weak compared to present day roles, responsibilities and competitive pressures.

Using the example of ICZM implementation in Cork Harbour – an intensive multi-use setting – the potential to inform and advance the implementation of climate adaptation is examined. National level policy for climate adaptation is reviewed with a local ICZM initiative with a focus on process, principles and people. Lessons learned and critical contributions are identified that can inform endeavours in similar coastal environments, and ensure that ICZM is optimised to support the implementation of climate adaptation and resilience enhancement. Evidence suggests that despite being implemented through different institutional and policy frameworks, the local partnership-based ICZM model can provide enabling mechanisms, facilitate capacity building and harness knowledge exchange and learning to support the local scale implementation of national climate policy.

Seaports as critical shore-based infrastructure are particularly vulnerable to impacts such as sea level rise and increasing incidents of severe weather events. In excess of ninety percent of global trade by volume is transported by sea. In Ireland, seaports are of strategic importance to the national economy. As an island nation, ninety eight percent of trade by volume comes through its seaports. Climate issues facing Irish ports include increasing storminess, such as the Atlantic storms experienced in the winter of 2014. Ireland provides a particularly valuable case study as the scale of Irish port sizes, analysed in this research, range from 500,000 to 30 million throughput tonnage. This tonnage range, is more typical of port sizes globally, and adds relevance to the study. The specific objectives of this paper are to establish the readiness of the seaport sector in Ireland to build adaptive capacity to respond to climate change and to assess lessons from and for Ireland in the context of international best practice. The research identified a lack of awareness and understanding of climate change amongst the sample population of seventy senior managers (comprising of national regulators and local authorities; commercial port harbour companies; and indigenous and multinational industries located in the port hinterland), as representatives of the maritime sector in Ireland. Evidence of a knowledge gap was identified from in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted over a twelve month period. Many industry stakeholders were actually implementing adaptation measures within their organisational strategies, unaware of the explicit links with climate adaptation.

Adaptation to climate change is an increasingly urgent priority for coastal managers. At the highest levels of governance, European Union and Member State adaptation policies and strategies are now well established, but meaningful adaptation interventions illustrating tangible gains in resilience remain scarce. A clear framework for generic adaptation processes, along with barriers to their smooth progress, have now been identified in the literature, and equally generic scenario analysis tools have been put forward to strengthen adaptation delivery by assisting coastal managers to overcome them. Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping (FCM) is a relatively novel option in this respect, having yet to achieve the kind of widespread uptake and trial that more orthodox futures approaches such as intuitive logic scenarios have. FCM is however growing rapidly in its range of uses and breadth of uptake, and its utility in overcoming the barriers to adaptation among coastal managers is therefore worthy of analysis. This case study, in which FCM was employed in place of intuitive logic scenario analysis within an adaptation strategy development process, found FCM to carry a number of key strengths that intuitive logic scenario analysis has been found to lack. Through enabling a more detailed and granular level of participatory development of the ‘engine’ of the futures process than possible under an intuitive logic approach, the level of buy-in and commitment to the adaptation strategy development process achieved among coastal managers and stakeholders was significantly greater.

Coastal environments are susceptible to a range of impacts arising from medium and long-term climate change. However, as Ireland's population and industrial centres are concentrated in coastal locations, Ireland's coastal communities will be particularly vulnerable to the impacts of climate change. Therefore, making the best use of existing knowledge to inform the establishment of governance structures capable of facilitating the measures and actions which may soon be required is a national imperative. Coastal communities worldwide have turned to integrated coastal zone management (ICZM) as a process to deliver sustainable development. This paper explores how experience gained from ICZM implementation can be harnessed to inform the development and implementation of climate adaptation policies, with a particular focus on the coastal zone. Using the principles and conceptual basis of Earth System Governance – an emerging approach to analyse complexity of governance under global environmental change – the paper maps the architecture of ICZM and climate governance in Ireland. The research identifies the main barriers to, and opportunities for, integrated application of the two policy domains. Barriers include the fragmentation of governance structures and responsibilities of key stakeholders, a lack of coordinated support for ICZM implementation at the national level, and a relatively weak awareness of the specifics of adaptation at the local level. Opportunities include the availability of expertise gathered from phases of ICZM implementation in Ireland, which encompasses mechanisms for science-policy integration, and invaluable experience of stakeholder participation and interaction. Current political and scientific support at national and EU levels give an additional impetus to climate research and actions which may bring additional opportunities and resources to coastal governance in Ireland.

The coastal environment is commonly the location for multiple human activities, of which recreation is just one. The coastal and marine sector has experienced nascent growth and this trend is likely to continue into the foreseeable future; the projected growth of the sector will impact coastal and marine resources, whilst also placing demands on those tasked with planning and managing the coastal environment. In Ireland, this presents particular challenges for coastal local authorities, as the principal planning consent body. In order to address these emerging challenges an innovative working partnership was developed between the research community and local authority to examine marine recreation in Cork Harbour, situated on the southern coast of Ireland. A programme of work was devised to identify data gaps in terms of: baseline information; user attitudes and perceptions towards existing management framework and facilities for recreation; interactions between different user groups; and, spatial distribution of recreational activities. The results of the assessment provided an improved understanding of the current coastal recreational situation, have value as input to spatial planning and contribute to the development of an integrated management plan for Cork Harbour.

Throughout northwest European coastal countries risks associated with coastal erosion are significant but spatially and temporally variable. The level of this risk is largely dependent on the extent of development within the coastal zones and a variety of approaches have been adopted for its management. The decision-making process for responding to erosion risk depends to a large extent on national policy. Coastal protection policy in northwest European countries varies in terms of the level of centralisation and formality of arrangements. In this paper the practical outworking of the informal practice-based system of Ireland, where there is no national policy framework, is compared with the policy-led system of England and Wales where formal national guidelines exist. Using case studies, the strengths and weaknesses of both the bottom-up and top-down approaches are assessed. The findings reveal strengths and weaknesses in both existing types of approach.