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With continuing influx of large numbers of people into coastal regions, human stresses on coastal ecosystems and resources are growing at the same time that climate variability and change and associated consequences in the marine environment are making coastal areas less secure for human habitation. The article reviews both climatic and nonclimatic drivers of the growing stresses on coastal natural and human systems, painting a picture of the mostly harmful impacts that result and the interactive and systemic challenges coastal managers face in managing these growing risks. Although adaptive responses are beginning to emerge, the adaptation challenge is enormous and requires not just incremental but also transformative changes. At the same time, such 'wicked' problems, by definition, defy all-encompassing, definitive, and final solutions; instead, temporary best solutions will have to be sought in the context of an iterative, deliberately learning-oriented risk management framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a systematic framework to identify barriers that may impede the process of adaptation to climate change. The framework targets the process of planned adaptation and focuses on potentially challenging but malleable barriers. Three key sets of components create the architecture for the framework. First, a staged depiction of an idealized, rational approach to adaptation decision-making makes up the process component. Second. a set of interconnected structural elements includes the actors, the larger context in which they function (e.g., governance), and the object on which they act (the system of concern that is exposed to climate change). At each of these stages, we ask (1) what could impede the adaptation process and (ii) how do the actors, context, and system of concern contribute to the barrier. To facilitate the identification of barriers, we provide a series of diagnostic questions. Third, the framework is completed by a simple matrix to help locate points of intervention to overcome a given barrier. It provides a systematic starting point for answering critical questions about how to support climate change adaptation at all levels of decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Climate change and sea-level rise (SLR) increasingly threaten the world''s coastlines, managers at local, regional, state, and federal levels will need to plan and implement adaptation measures to cope with these impacts in order to continue to protect the economic, social, and environmental security of the state and of local communities. In this paper, we explore the information needs of California coastal managers as they begin confronting the growing risks from climate change. Through this case study we examine the challenges managers face presently, what information they use to perform their responsibilities, what additional information and other knowledge resources they may need to begin planning for climate change. We place our study into the broader context of the study of how science can best support policy-makers and resource managers as they begin to plan and prepare for adaptation to climate change. Based on extensive interview and survey research in the state, we find that managers prefer certain types of information and information sources and would benefit from various learning opportunities (in addition to that information) to make better use of available global change information. Coastal managers are concerned about climate change and willing to address it in their work, but require financial and technical assistance from other agencies at the state and federal level to do so. The study illustrates the strong need for boundary organizations to serve various intermediary functions between science and practice, especially in the context of adaptation to global climate change impacts. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Uncertainties in the human dimensions of global change deeply affect the assessment and responses to climate change impacts such as sea-level rise (SLR). This paper explores the uncertainties in the assessment process and in state-level policy and management responses of three US states to SLR. The findings reveal important political, economic, managerial, and social factors that enable or constrain SLR responses; question disasters as policy windows; and uncover new policy opportunities in the history of state coastal policies. Results suggest that a more realistic, and maybe more useful picture of climate change impacts will emerge if assessments take more seriously the locally embedded realities and constraints that affect individual decision-makers’ and communal responses to climate change. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]