COASTAL

Adapted from the project website

Why COASTAL?

Rural development in the EU is increasingly affected by changing market developments, decreasing population densities, urban sprawl, lack of employment, desertification and other environmental, economic and social pressures. On the other hand, coastal areas provide interesting business opportunities but are also influenced by economic activities in the hinterland. Multi-Actor Approaches are combined with System Dynamics to analyse the environmental, economic, and social interactions of rural and coastal areas in a holistic manner. The underlying feedback structures governing the dynamics, vulnerabilities, limitations, and business opportunities of the land-sea system are identified and analysed, taking into consideration the regulatory frameworks, stakeholder priorities and social-economic conditions at the local, regional and macro-regional scale levels. Multi-Actor Labs using qualitative and quantitative tools are set up to support the co-creation exchanges between scientific experts, stakeholders, business entrepreneurs, sector- and administrative representatives.

Project Objectives

The overarching objective of COASTAL is to improve the rural-coastal synergies in strategic business and policy decision making and collaboration between coastal and rural actors. This is achieved by developing, demonstrating and applying a generic toolset and performance indicators by combining a multi-actor approach with system dynamics modelling. This allows us to understand the interactions with market, demographic, environmental and climate forecasts, and quantify the positive and negative externalities.

By combining local knowledge and scientific expertise in a co-creation process the COASTAL project engages actors and stakeholders at all levels to improve coastal-rural interdependence and collaboration by identifying problems and setting up evidence-based business roadmaps and policy solutions, focusing on economic growth, marine spatial planning, and environmental protection, including inland water quality.

COASTAL:
- contributes to integrated coastal-rural planning and coastal-rural synergy in the case study regions and the wider EU territory
- develops a durable, online platform for knowledge exchange about coastal-rural synergy with concrete examples and tools for supporting land-sea collaboration

Resources

Duration

May 2018 - October 2022