Future proofing Scotland's remote coastal areas: evaluation of the potential for nature-based coastal adaptation

Restoring natural coastal systems is increasingly viewed as an effective strategy to adapt and enhance resilience to the adverse effects of climate change in coastal areas, which are projected to experience severe impacts due to increased exposure to coastal flooding and erosion hazards under rising sea levels (IPCC, 2019).

Growing numbers of approaches to restore coastal dynamics by working with natural processes to manage vulnerable coastal areas, including beach nourishment, dune rebuilding, wetland restoration and managed retreat, have emerged as key nature-based solutions (NBS) in the past decade (e.g. Temmerman et al., 2013). In many cases, these approaches have been implemented as

demonstration projects in protected areas, in estuaries or fronting urban, highdensity settlements (Bridges et al., 2018). However, often remote and sparsely populated rural areas can still have surprisingly relevant levels of coastal occupation, from buildings, infrastructure, cultural heritage and resources that

connect these communities and sustain rural livelihoods. As such, robust adaptation approaches that are specifically suited to the challenges of rural coastal areas need to be urgently considered, embedding interrelated aspects such as the evidence-base on coastal environmental change, now and in the future, and

associated risks to communities, coupled with the legal and policy frameworks, sustainable financing, government and community support necessary to identify and implement rural coastal adaptation options. In Scotland the vast majority of the coast is characterized as rural, but with important distinctions between accessible and remote rural and, notably, with

present and future erosion and flooding placing relevant assets at risk across all coastal cells in Scotland (Hansom et al., 2017). Since 2016 the Scottish Government's Dynamic Coast project [www.dynamiccoast.com] has transformed the evidence base of past, recent and anticipated coastal change across Scotland

and further enhancements expect in winter 2020/1. Whilst this is rekindling interest in targeted coastal planning instruments such as Shoreline Management Plans, an urban-rural divide remains, leaving non-urban shores disproportionately underresourced in monitoring, detailed planning policies and dedicated funding

mechanisms to increase resilience and implement coastal adaptation actions. Research in this area is thus urgently needed, to identify the rural areas requiring adaptation, the suite of NBS that can be used and the policy, financing and social enablers that can better support NBS implementation. The recently announced and

unprecedented provision of ~£12m of Scottish Government funding for coastal adaptation, means that this research project is extremely timely and would directly support proactive adaptation to rural coastal climate change (Brown et al., 2017).