The Blue Guide to coastal resilience: Protecting coastal communities through nature-based solutions

The Blue Guide to Coastal Resilience illustrates an approach, providing DRR planners with step-by-step guidance for implementing various NbS in coastal areas — where 600 million people, nearly 10% of the world’s population, live under constant threat of storms, flooding and rising sea levels. The guide integrates all relevant tools and processes into a single source to help conservation and humanitarian DRR planners determine whether and how NbS can be used to harness the protective benefits of coastal ecosystems and reduce the risks of climate-related hazards to vulnerable coastal communities, homes and other assets.

This Blue Guide is primarily designed for practitioners, parti- cularly those in the humanitarian sector supporting coastal communities. This includes technical experts and project mana- gers who will be able to follow the various stages in this guide, who can integrate NbS into DRR planning, implement such plans, and scale up good practices. To use this guide, expertise in ecology and prior knowledge of NbS is not necessary. However, prior knowledge of project management is required.

The guide is also useful for:

• Community members who co-design efforts towards safer and greener coastal communities with humanitarian organizations;
• Government staff who work with humanitarian organisations on efforts to reduce disaster risk; and
• Staff/volunteers of NGOs or National Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies working in coastal communities and supporting risk reduction or wider resilience efforts.