Abstract
Climate change is leading to a reimagination of rural coastlines worldwide, including in dyked agricultural land such as polders. Decisions can be locally fraught about where to continue to defend such land uses through higher dykes, where to retreat the line of defense landward or remove it entirely to restore the erstwhile tidal wetlands that provide natural protection. Many ecosystem services are received by local residents from such systems, and just decisions will require a nuanced understanding of who benefits from which landscape arrangements. Ecosystem service disaggregation research rarely explores dwelling type among the variables studied, but those who live in apartments can be overlooked as stakeholders of rural land use decisions. We report in this research on surveys deployed separately to house and apartment residents in the hypertidal Bay of Fundy to understand if and how each group benefits from linear dykes, dykelands, and tidal wetlands. More apartment than house residents report benefits from the three landscapes, and they also report using the target landscapes more often. Responses from both cohorts indicate the three landscapes are complementary, together delivering a non-material service bundle centred on nature enjoyment and opportunities for reflection. We then focused in on apartment residents to understand how they evaluated coastal adaptation options in the region. Managed dyke realignment was the preferred option, statistically associated with benefits across the three landscapes. The implications of these results for coastal adaptation decision-making are discussed, filling a gap in the literature on dwelling type and ecosystem service benefits.
Citation
Sherren, K., Howard, S. C., Legault, A., & Cornejo-Denman, L. (2024). Rural apartment residents are important coastal ecosystem service beneficiaries and stakeholders in climate adaption decisions. ACCESS/BoFEP 2024, St. Andrews, New Brunswick, 4-7 June 2024.
Related Blog Post
Khan, J., Legault, A., Margeson, K., Martinez Calderon, D. & Wells, P. G. (4 July 2024). “Tides of Change” – The ACCESS-Bay of Fundy Ecosystem Partnership Conference, 4-7 June 2024. EIUI Blog. https://eiui.ca/tides-of-change-the-access-bay-of-fundy-ecosystem-partnership-conference-4-7-june-2024/