The benefits of coastal adaptation through conservation of foreshore vegetation

This paper presents the first global scale assessment of the benefits of conserving foreshore vegetation as a means of adaptation to future projections of change in coastal flood risk. Due to rising sea levels and projected socio-economic change, global coastal flood risk is expected to increase in the future. To reduce this increase in risk, one option is to reduce the probability or magnitude of the hazard through the implementation of structural, Nature-based or hybrid adaptation measures.

Although this study gives a first proxy of the flood risk reduction benefits of conserving foreshore vegetation at the global scale, it shows promising results for including Nature-based and hybrid adaptation measures in coastal adaptation schemes.