Search

Marine and coastal environments are diverse and dynamic, supporting competing human interests and demands. As society seeks to balance contested uses of space, more holistic planning processes have emerged, which consider social, economic, and ecological factors. One approach that considers social factors, and more specifically social acceptance, is "social license to operate" (SLO). Originating in the terrestrial mining industry, SLO has been adopted by various marine industries. Except for some emerging work in the conservation field, SLO is typically applied to industrial marine and coastal contexts. To understand SLO's uses in other marine and coastal planning contexts, namely conservation, adaptation, and restoration, we conducted a scoping review using the term SLO and similar concepts, including public or social acceptance, support, and buy-in. Results indicate the concept of SLO is still emerging in non-industrial marine and coastal planning, with an emphasis on gaining public acceptance rather than maintaining it. The concept of SLO was applied broadly, including as a measurement for public support and a product of effective engagement. Most publications focused on barriers and drivers of SLO. Influential factors are identified and organized by theme, then discussed based on their relationships within a social-ecological system framework. Considering the common factors and their associated systems helps to link elements necessary to obtain SLO, highlighting their interconnectedness with each other, society, and the natural environment. The findings of this review illustrate SLO's utility for academics and practitioners alike, through its application in methods, tools, values, and concepts that characterize public inclusion for marine and coastal planning., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Coastal communities face increasingly difficult decisions about responses to climate change. Armoring and defending the coast are being revealed as ineffective in terms of outcomes and cost, particularly in rural areas. Nature-based options include approaches that make space for coastal dynamism (e.g., through managed retreat) or leverage ecosystem services such as erosion control (e.g., by restoring coastal wetlands). Resistance can be strong to these alternatives to hard infrastructure. Nova Scotia, off Canada's Atlantic coast, is a vulnerable coastal jurisdiction facing such decisions. The emerging climax thinking framework was used to design 14 experimental online focus groups. These focus groups explored how three priming treatments influenced discussions about adaptation options and urgency and quantitative pre/post-tests, compared with information-only control treatments. A future-focused priming strategy seemed most effective since it fostered discussions about duties to future generations. The altruism-focused priming strategy involved reflections of wartime mobilization and more recent collective action. It also worked but was more difficult to implement and potentially higher risk. Past-focused priming was counterproductive. Further research should test the future-focused and altruism-focused strategies among larger groups and in different jurisdictions, reducing some of the biases in our sample., (© 2022. The Author(s).)

The wildland-urban interface (WUI) is the region where development meets and intermingles with wildlands. The WUI has an elevated fire risk due to the proximity of development and residents to wildlands with natural wildfire regimes. Existing methods of delineating WUI are typically applied over a large region, use proxies for risk, and do not consider site-specific fire hazard drivers. While these models are appropriate for federal and provincial risk management, municipal managers require models intended for smaller regions. The model developed here uses the Burn-P3 fire behavior model to model WUI from local fire susceptibility (FS) in two study communities. Forest fuel code (FFC) maps for the study communities were modified using remote sensing data to produce detailed forest edges, including ladder fuels, update data currency, and add buildings and roads. The modified FFC maps used in Burn-P3 produced bimodal FS distributions for each community. The WUI in these communities was delineated as areas within community bounds where FS was greater than or equal to -1 SD from the mean FS value ([Formula: see text]), which fell in the trough of the bimodal distribution. The WUI so delineated conformed to the definition of WUI. This model extends WUI modeling for broader risk management initiatives for municipal management of risk, as it (a) considers site-specific drivers of fire behavior; (b) models risk, represented by WUI, specific to a community; and, (c) does not use proxies for risk.