Effective coastal resilience and adaptation in practice - Part 2 - Delivery readiness

Step 1 – The System resilience vision

The resilience vision sets the long-term direction of travel, defining what communities and organisations are trying to sustain, adapt or transform over time. It establishes a shared understanding of future intent and provides a guiding reference for all subsequent decisions, actions, and investments. Through a systems-led visioning process, we can:

• Define the component systems that together make up coastal System resilience (e.g. environment, infrastructure, communities).
• Through each system, establish a shared understanding of long-term coastal System change and uncertainty.
• Define what improved resilience means in the System context (e.g. safety, place identity, economic function, environmental outcomes).
• Identify acceptable and unacceptable futures.
• Agree on the long-term ambition for an adaptation plan in each system (e.g. sustain, transition, relocate, transform).

The resilience vision is not a list of management policies or intervention options. It is a statement of intent against which adaptation plans, pathways and decisions can be tested. The vision will be refined and strengthened through the adaptation planning process and associated engagement, as understanding improves and delivery pathways take shape.

Without a clear resilience vision, decisions tend to default to short-term risk management; trade-offs are made implicitly rather than transparently; and communities experience adaptation as reactive, unplanned loss (unmanaged transition) rather than as planned, supported change (managed transition).

Focusing on delivery readiness at this stage enables difficult conversations to happen early and constructively.

“We are resilient when everyday life keeps working as conditions change. People are supported, involved and empowered, essential services function, the local economy adjusts, and space is made for natural processes to deliver wider benefits. We do this through planning, so change is delivered incrementally, and shocks do not cascade into lasting loss.“

Step 2 – Identify component systems

Resilience is typically supported by:

• Natural systems – coastlines, habitats.
• Built systems – defences, infrastructure, housing.
• Community systems – health, vulnerability, skills and needs and services.
• Economic systems – livelihoods, local economies, funding opportunities, regeneration priorities.
• Planning systems – spatial planning and land-use policy, development, consenting, placemaking and regeneration frameworks.
• Governance systems – cross-cuts at System level to avoid conflicts, take opportunities, and deliver strategic and local priorities.

While traditional risk management may identify these, too often they are recognised as supporting and potentially independent. Here we make the shift to fully acknowledging them as an integrated part of a single System, whose interaction collectively shapes resilience. Within the framework, these component systems are expressed through a set of resilience themes to support clear and accessible understanding.

For each system, this step:

• Clarifies ownership and accountability.
• Maps statutory duties and decision-making powers.
• Identifies gaps, overlaps and misalignments between teams and organisations.
• Establishes how decisions affecting resilience and adaptation will be coordinated.
• Identifies quantifiable indicators to track condition, change and performance.

Together, this provides a consistent framework for understanding how different parts of the System contribute to resilience and how decisions affecting one resilience theme may influence others. This shared structure is carried forward into adaptation planning, providing a clear basis for aligning actions, investments, and pathways across the System.

Step 3 – Aligning governance

Many adaptation barriers arise because responsibility is assumed rather than agreed. Aligning resilience component-systems with governance can transform adaptation from an aspiration into a reality.

This creates a transparent and defensible position where a governance structure that supports adaptation decisions can be enabled. Crucially, governance alignment must also be with community and local priorities, so decisions are co-created and delivery can be driven locally (bottom-up) within a clear strategic framework (top-down). Aligning component-systems with governance transforms adaptation from an aspirational plan into organisational readiness and delivery.

As a starting point, aligning governance involves identifying who need to be involved in shaping adaptation, and clarifying where decision‑making authority sits and where responsibility is shared.

Governance models are strongly organisational or System-dependent. Our model therefore provides an initial simplified structure that acknowledges governance in three core elements.

• Technical Oversight – Responsible for understanding the risks, impacts, advances in science and technical practicalities of delivering Actions.
• Delivery – Responsible for enabling the delivery of Actions through funding commitments, identification of delivery pathways, influence over budgets, and overall resource planning.
• Awareness – Responsible for managing external relationships and coordinating engagement to support delivery. This includes ensuring partners and communities are involved at the right time, avoiding conflicts, and identifying complementary opportunities.

Step 4 – Mapping the ecosystem

Plans and strategies should be identified to ensure they align with adaptation objectives. Conflicts and misalignments need to be addressed early. Dependencies and the sequencing of actions should be clearly outlined. Everyone must share an understanding of where influence and leverage are found.  A ‘typical’ ecosystem may include:

• Spatial, place, community and land-use plans.
• Shoreline and flood risk management plans.
• Infrastructure, regeneration and investment programmes.
• Nature restoration and environmental strategies.
• Housing, health and social resilience plans.

This step explicitly addresses the challenge: complement, not conflict, concept of our approach.

• Do these support adaptation delivery?
• Are objectives aligned with each other?
• Do they compete for the same funding?
• Do they enable funding to be unlocked?
• Do they lock in unsustainable decisions?

Implementation is simple and undertaken through categorisation:

• Requires awareness only.
• Provides information or evidence to the adaptation plan.
• Relies on the adaptation plan evidence.
• Integrated into the adaptation plan.

Without ecosystem mapping, adaptation plans are routinely undermined by decisions taken elsewhere and risk sitting in isolation. Funding readiness activity here protects future investment and accelerates delivery.