The coast: Rough around the edges - New Zealand Coastal Society 21st annual conference
The themes and flavour of the conference will encompass the broad scope of the Society's aims, while taking the best advantage of the spectacular location, and its rural and coastal communities. The conference will also let you savour the character of the West Coast's renowned hospitality. A fieldtrip northwards to Punakaiki along the world-famous "Coast Road" highway will be a feature of the conference. A Coastal Monitoring Workshop will be held on Thursday morning to promote national collaboration, and daily Keynote speakers will be confirmed soon.
Themes
The conference themes below encourage cross disciplinary contributions from the broad range of practitioners interested in and influencing New Zealand's coastal environment. They encourage you to think of how your proposed conference contribution can fit within one of these themes.
Communities and Our Coasts
Coastal communities are vulnerable to anthropogenic influences on the coastal environment as well as to variability in natural phenomena. This theme looks to examine and share how community and iwi capacity is, and can be, built with respect to the New Zealand coastal zone and its associated management regimes.
Coastal Hazards
This theme focuses on the management of, and adaptation to, coastal hazards and the underpinning science, planning and engineering. Coastal storms, erosion, flooding, tsunami and sea level rise as well as technological hazards (e.g. oil spills) are among the possible subtopics considered for this theme. Other possible areas of interest include coastal monitoring and hazard research techniques.
Workshops
Resilient coastal communities – how do you balance long-term planning and short-term hazard management?
Events around the New Zealand coast, including recently in Hokitika, demonstrate the tensions that can arise when a hazard (erosion or flooding) event drives the need for urgent decisions to be made to protect assets, which may be in conflict with longer-term community aspirations for their coast. This 2 hour workshop (aligned to the conference themes of managing resource conflicts and Coastal hazards) will explore some of these tensions that coastal communities and the councils have to contend with, and try and offer solutions to the challenges posed. Four speakers will set the scene, followed by questions and facilitated discussion.