Building Adaptation Capacity
Findings from the 2023 California Coastal Adaptation Needs Assessment
Background
The 2023 California Coastal Adaptation Needs Assessment seeks to understand the needs and challenges facing coastal practitioners working to protect California's coastlines.
This assessment is the fourth in a series of surveys (2007, 2011, 2016) allowing for longitudinal insights into California's efforts to address sea level rise and other environmental change.
USC Sea Grant, in partnership with the Ocean and Coastal Policy Center at the University of California Santa Barbara, administered the newest iteration of this survey in the winter of 2023.
Survey Population
In total, the survey was taken by 490 respondents from across the state of California.
The survey deliberately sought to engage a broad range of coastal practitioners.
These coastal practitioners included any individual working, engaged, or interested in coastal resource management, adaptation planning decision-making, conservation, or protection along California’s open ocean, bay, delta, or estuarine coastlines - including members of the public.
22% of respondents identified as federal, state, or regional governmental representatives and 22% identified as members of the public.
While the survey shows a slight increase in Tribal participation compared to the 2016 survey (1%, or seven individuals, compared to 0%), Tribal participation remained low compared to other sectors.
Key Findings
The goal of the survey is to understand the progress that coastal practitioners have made in coastal management and coastal adaptation planning—to find examples of success and examples of ongoing obstacles.
The survey illuminates what policies, research, and information can support this ongoing work.
Current Coastal Management Challenges
Shoreline hazard management is the most frequently identified top coastal management challenge.
Housing (included as a coastal management challenge for the first time in the 2023 survey) follows as the second most prominent concern.
Managed retreat is completely unappealing when we are also facing a housing cris[i]s and no options exist for replacing lost housing or other services in the coastal environment.”
The majority of participants believe the severity of their top management challenge has increased over the past five years (83%), and a majority equally anticipate that severity will continue to increase in the coming five years (81%).
Over half of respondents agree that there is a formal mandate to address their top coastal management hazard.
However, a majority also maintain that the legal framework to manage this issue is unclear or ambiguous.
Few respondents believe that the authority to manage their issue is clearly assigned to a single department or agency.
Respondents believe addressing pressing coastal management challenges requires interagency coordination.
However, current collaborative efforts are insufficient, and respondents indicate that there is not enough federal, Tribal, state, regional, or local government involvement in community-level adaptation planning.
Climate Adaptation and Sea Level Rise Planning
Adaptation and mitigation remain high priorities for California at 90% and 80% of respondents, respectively. Concern for both has increased since 2016.
Images: 2016 (Gray) & 2023 (Blue)
Californians are making progress in adaptation, with more respondents implementing strategies than in past years.
However, many are still in early stages, assessing issues and response options.
As in 2016 and 2011, funding shortages, limited staff, and competing priorities remain major barriers. While coastal adaptation planning has seen some success, more work is needed.
The range of potential adaptation strategies is expanding. While protection methods like seawalls remain a focus - interest in nature-based solutions (e.g. living shorelines and habitat restoration), beach replenishment, and land use planning (e.g. hazard setbacks, rolling easements, land back strategies) is growing.
The majority of respondents have not aligned, integrated, or leveraged an adaptation plan with other local plans, including Local Coastal Programs (LCPs).
Community Engagement
Community engagement issues related to coastal management persist along the California coastline. Continued research is needed to better evaluate and address the impacts of environmental change to all communities.
Respondents see opportunities to boost community engagement in adaptation planning through expanded civic outreach and better sea level rise information access for the public.
Some respondents wrote in their explicit support for compensating community members for their time and participation in the adaptation planning process.
Survey results highlight that while progress is being made in LCP and shoreline planning, significant work and investment will be needed to keep the state moving forward in this arena.
This may entail working with the inherently political nature of the process and recognizing that collaborative planning work takes time and organizational capacity to be successful.
Policy, Research, Information, and Finance Needs
California coastal practitioners regularly consult sea level rise science, land use plans and policies, and flood risk information to carry out their work. They find this data primarily through internet searches, colleagues, and state and federal agencies.
These findings mirror 2016 results, suggesting that people turn to the same sources to find information about sea level rise and extreme weather.
As in 2016, the 2023 survey captures a wide range of adaptation expenditures. Respondents also identified a need for developing more capacity, whether to understand and analyze the science of sea level rise or to expand community engagement.
Increased staff capacity to apply for and administer funding will help Californians continue to progress in their efforts, while future investments in community engagement can support more just adaptation.
Takeaways & Conclusions
In 2011, there was more concern about whether sea level rise was a significant problem. Today, practitioners struggle with the complexity of multiple and increasingly sophisticated projections of future sea levels.
The survey captures the movement of many communities from the vulnerability assessment stage to the adaptation planning stage, though activity continues across all phases of the adaptation planning decision process.
- ~50% of respondents are in the planning phase. The remaining respondents are divided between the understanding and implementation phase.
- 70% of all respondents have progressed to the planning or implementation phases.
- 18% of respondents in the planning phase indicating they had selected adaptation strategies for implementation
- 52% felt that adaptation planning has been somewhat successful
- 3% felt that adaptation planning has been very successful
Among science needs, the majority of respondents identified the need for more refined and localized sea level rise and shoreline change projections, including sand and sediment movements.
A questionnaire asking respondents how they would characterize the success of coastal adaptation planning in their community (selected one answer).
While the data highlight the need for expanded engagement, respondents emphasized that meaningful engagement must go beyond mere conversations. Few respondents felt their community’s vulnerability assessments, adaptation plans, or Local Coastal Programs (LCPs) sufficiently address equitable treatment of all constituents – but many indicated that future efforts would aim to do so. At the same time, the number and type of practitioners in the coastal adaptation arena are expanding.
A questionnaire asking respondents if the coastal adaptation planning process sufficiently addresses the needs of all community members (selected one answer).
A majority of respondents reported that collaborative efforts are lacking in their respective regions, while also highlighting that not all community members’ needs are met throughout the adaptation planning process. Results indicate that local governments are highly involved in coastal management, with state, federal, and Tribal governments trailing.
Across the board, respondents are more likely to request more, rather than less, government involvement. Collaboration across all scales of government and between state agencies can strengthen future adaptation efforts.
Questionnaire asking respondents if they think that there have been sufficient collaborative efforts in their region.
The increased focus on tangible adaptation strategies highlights political conflicts in balancing state, local, public, private, economic, and environmental interests. While LCPs are valued as a mandate of the Coastal Act, addressing state concerns remains challenging. Community engagement and the complexity of adaptation planning also strain governance capacity. Respondents across the board identified a need for more capacity, whether to understand and analyze the science of sea level rise or to expand community engagement to address environmental justice.
More investment is needed in adaptation planning, including dollars to support community outreach and more sensitive vulnerability assessment. More technical capacity and assistance are needed to develop scientifically-based alternative adaptation strategies, while more investment in communicating this science to the public is also needed to ensure community support for specific strategies. The survey is also a harbinger of an even greater investment on the horizon—that which is needed to implement the many hundreds of projects that will begin to unfold out of the adaptation planning and update process.
Staffing and funding issues emerged repeatedly throughout the survey. As one individual advocated:
[We need] resources and focus on long-term, community-wide [adaptation] planning, and associated public outreach and education. Basically, all [adaptation] planning we do is parcel by parcel, and both we and the County do not have any staff dedicated to long-term [adaptation] planning… Parcel by parcel planning is inherently exclusive of the broader community because it does not provide good opportunities for community members to engage with a broader plan/vision for how the whole community will adapt.
Ultimately, policymakers must look for opportunities to shift from discrete, ad-hoc climate solutions toward more unified adaptation governance.
While California has taken many concrete steps to address extreme weather and sea level rise, now may be the time to move beyond incremental and ad hoc measures, to invest in more holistic and meaningful integrative planning and potentially transformative adaptation planning across multiple geographic, temporal, and social dimensions. Such integrative efforts may lead to more transformative adaptation actions that are also more effective and equitable over the long run.
Read the Assessment
To read the 2023 assessment, click the button below!
If you use this story map for a presentation, training, or report of any kind, please let us know at: seagrant@usc.edu.
Thank you to all who made this effort possible! For a full list of partners and collaborators, as well as a suggested citation, please see the full report.
