Coping with the growing impacts of flooding in EU countries, a paradigm shift in flood management can be observed, moving from safety‐based towards risk‐based approaches and holistic perspectives. ...Flood resilience is a common denominator of most of the approaches. In this article, we present the ‘Flood Resilience Rose’ (FRR), a management tool to promote harmonised action towards flood resilience in European regions and beyond. The FRR is a result of a two‐step process. First, based on scientific concepts as well as analysis of relevant policy documents, we identified three ‘levels of operation’. The first level refers to the EU Floods Directive and an extended multi‐layer safety approach, comprising the four different layers of protection, prevention, preparedness and recovery, and related measures to be taken. This level is not independent but depends both on the institutional (second level) and the wider (third level) context. Second, we used surveys, semi‐structured interviews and group discussions during workshops with experts from Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom to validate the definitions and the FRR's practical relevance. The presented FRR is thus the result of rigorous theoretical and practical consideration and provides a tool capable to strengthen flood risk management practice.
Groundwater salinization due to sea-level rise is a problem that governance actors in coastal areas of the North Sea region have overseen for a long period. As an ecological problem associated with ...climate change, it can be severely exacerbated by careless water management. This paper studies governance processes, actor perspectives and responses to groundwater salinization and sea-level rise in the East Frisian and Frisian regions of the German North Sea coast. Due to its low-lying landscape, large areas of land remain below sea-level, making groundwater salinization an urgent concern. Our research questions are: (i) What type of anticipatory governance approach can be found with actors in the study region concerning groundwater salinization and climate adaptation challenges? (ii) How can an alternative anticipatory governance approach promote proactive governance processes addressing the complex problem of groundwater salinization in terms of awareness, preparedness, methods, strategies and policy actions? We conducted semi-structured interviews and workshops between 2017 and 2021, including a group of 15 actors from private and civil society organizations as well as authorities on municipal, inter-municipal and state levels. Our study finds that problem awareness in municipalities and regional governance levels in East Frisia and Frisia is low. Current management of groundwater salinization mainly focuses on technical response measures, while precautionary measures are given low priorities. With regard to governance approaches, our study identifies apparent societal challenges of groundwater salinization at the complex interface between water management, human activities and natural processes, and sustainable ways to manage and protect groundwater resources. However, we found indication for a defensive anticipatory governance approach prioritizing risk management and assessing plausible futures. In participatory processes, we discussed possible technical, non-technical and institutional adaptation options for future implementation. Finally, conclusions will be drawn on how knowledge and awareness building can contribute to change actors perspectives on the overseen problem of groundwater salinization and increase adaptiveness.
Face-to-face participatory research and interaction is at the heart of empirical social research. The COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting physical distance restrictions had a significant impact on ...qualitative research. Instantly, conventional qualitative social science methods had to be adapted to ‘remote’ and digital modes of interaction. The focus of this article is to analyze how and why video-mediated formats such as online conference tools and online whiteboards affect personal interaction, cooperation, collaboration and data acquisition. In a retrospective process, we first inductively defined three characteristics of interaction, namely emplacement, communication and rapport. Conducting research about climate adaptation in coastal regions touches upon a sensitive and emotional topic. Emplacement is a decisive characteristic to understand how identities are built. The combination of verbal and non-verbal communication leads to contextualization, and building rapport is essential for trustful collaboration. To answer the question if video-mediated formats enable a replacement of face-to face formats, we deductively analyze the implications of video-mediated formats used in semi-structured interviews, qualitative social network analysis and focus groups on these characteristics. Our analysis reveals that video-mediated formats are sufficient to gather information but hamper crucial relational and trust-building processes. This implies that, by using video-mediated formats, the content level was hardly exceeded. Compared to face-to-face formats, non-verbal communication, emplacement and rapport are limited using digital formats, with problematic consequences for data generation and its understanding as well as for interaction in terms of trust, lasting relationships, knowledge generation and liability. In brief: Video-mediated formats hold the danger that research is done about participants and not with participants.
Land management in coastal areas has to cope with impacts of climate change and sea level rise. In Germany, landscape plans assess and organize the spatial allocation of land use as an environmental ...contribution to general spatial planning. Collaborative planning processes are important to develop sustainable and ecosystem-based strategies to make coastal landscapes climate proof. However, there is little experience with collaborative processes in practical planning in Germany, and probably in other countries as well. This paper conducts an empirical case study in the low-lying coastal areas of northwest Germany. During a collaborative landscape planning process, four different ecosystem-based land management scenarios have been co-designed by regional experts and researchers. The participatory and iterative process included the development of scenario narratives to define planning goals, the use of land use elements and their relations to ecosystem services as planning entities in terms of indicators, the art-based illustrations of the different scenarios, and an evaluation and monitoring of the outcomes by regional experts. The decision-maker group decided on the so-called “actor-based” scenario, which contained freshwater retention areas (polders) to prevent potential uncontrolled flooding of the hinterland. This climate adaptation strategy has been implemented in the regional development plan of the county.
•We used a participatory approach for adaptive land use planning.•Development of a guideline for linking ecosystem services approach with social preferences and needs.•The resulting guideline assists ...researchers and planners to implement a more integrated development processes.•Additionally, it is a bridging concept to translate social impacts into ecosystem services.
Coastal zones with their natural and societal sub-systems are exposed to rapid changes and pressures on resources. Scarcity of space and impacts of climate change are prominent drivers of land use and adaptation management today. Necessary modifications to present land use management strategies and schemes influence both the structures of coastal communities and the ecosystems involved. Approaches to identify the impacts and account for (i) the linkages between social preferences and needs and (ii) ecosystem services in coastal zones have been largely absent. The presented method focuses on improving the inclusion of ecosystem services in planning processes and clarifies the linkages with social impacts. In this study, fourteen stakeholders in decision-making on land use planning in the region of Krummhörn (northwestern Germany, southern North Sea coastal region) conducted a regional participative and informal process for local planning capable to adapt to climate driven changes. It is argued that scientific and practical implications of this integrated assessment focus on multi-functional options and contribute to more sustainable practices in future land use planning. The method operationalizes the ecosystem service approach and social impact analysis and demonstrates that social demands and provision of ecosystem services are inherently connected.
The biodiversity of ecosystems and their services (ecosystem services - ESs) are declining worldwide due to decisions regarding land-use/land-cover (LULC). As a result, global risks related to ...climate change are exacerbating as these areas are needed to adapt to climate change and mitigate these risks. The integration of ESs into spatial decision-making is seen as an opportunity to ensure their sustainability. Despite the scientific and practical studies on this issue, it is stated that more studies are needed to clarify how ESs will be used in spatial decision-making. The proposed approach as Integrated ESs (IESs), which builds on the LULC assessment, has the potential to develop ESs-based spatial decision-making by enabling comprehensive approaches to be made. This paper aims to evaluate the results of IESs assessment incorporated with scenario analysis in the context of the integration of ESs into spatial decision-making, to discuss the contributions that this integration can make to the sustainability of ESs in light of these results and to provide straightforward suggestions on how ESs can be linked to the spatial planning tools in Istanbul. The findings of the research prove that ESs in many contexts are relevant to various stages of spatial planning and a spatial decision-making approach that incorporates ES knowledge can contribute to ensuring the sustainability of ESs and achieving sustainable development.
Novel strategies in coastal protection are needed to cope with climate change-induced sea level rise. They aim at the sustainable development of coastal areas in light of intensification and land use ...changes. A promising approach is the design of nature-based solutions (NbS), complementing the safety levels of technical infrastructure. However, NbS lack a widespread and large-scale implementation. To address this deficit, co-design concepts are needed that combine experiences from science and practice. This work presents and discusses the approach of a coast-specific real-world laboratory (RwL) addressing the inclusive design of ecosystem-based coastal protection. Strategies of RwLs are applied for the first time in a coastal context along the North Sea coastline in Germany. We found the concept of RwLs suitable for coastal transdisciplinary research, although adaptions in the spatial reference level or flexibility in location and time of experimentation are necessary. A profound actor analysis is indispensable to specify participatory processes and interaction levels. A criteria-based cooperative selection of RwL sites helps to reveal and solve conflicting interests to achieve trust between science and practice. Addressing site-specific characteristics and practitioners’ needs, our coastal RwL provides a mutual learning space to develop and test NbS to complement technical coastal protection.
The ecosystem services concept has been introduced as a decisive approach to include ecosystem functioning in land-use planning and stakeholder-driven sustainable development. Early integration of ...stakeholders in participatory processes in the nexus of ecosystem services, climate adaption, and land-use management is still a demanding challenge. This investigation followed a cognitive approach to archetype analysis. We defined cognitive archetypes as recurrent patterns in individual perceptions of social-ecological relations. Our aim was to identify cognitive archetypes based on stakeholders’ perceived relation between land-use elements and ecosystem services as exemplified in a German North Sea coastal region. Land-use elements were spatially explicit and delivered a variety of different ecosystem services. The stakeholders were regional decision makers and experts who represented key societal sectors, i.e., water management, agriculture, nature conservation, regional policy, and tourism. Within a participatory process, these stakeholders individually evaluated a matrix of 19 land-use elements and 18 ecosystem services. In terms of archetype analysis, the stakeholders were considered as different cases, and the evaluation of relationships between land-use elements and ecosystem services built the attributions to identify archetypes. They independently agreed on the relevance of close to one-third of 342 attributions, whereas there was disagreement on approximately two-thirds of the possible attributions. By identifying agreements across different sectors, 2 archetypes in land-use element–ecosystem service attributions were identified. The first archetype built on monofunctional attributions, i.e., one land-use element was relevant for the provision of one ecosystem service. The second archetype described land-use elements attributed to bundles of ecosystem services, indicating multifunctionality of land-use elements. Disagreement can result primarily from sector or individual viewpoints. In the case of disagreements, land-use–ecosystem relationships can reveal archetypical mutually exclusive interests, the third archetype. We found that disagreements were mainly individual and not sector specific. This indicated that individual knowledge on service outputs of multiple land uses differed strongly among the stakeholders, particularly with respect to regulatory services.
Salinization represents a global threat to agricultural productivity and human livelihoods. Historically, much saline research has focussed on arid or semi-arid systems. The North Sea region of ...Europe has seen very little attention in salinity literature, however, under future climate predictions, this is likely to change. In this review, we outline the mechanisms of salinization across the North Sea region. These include the intrusion of saline groundwater, coastal flooding, irrigation and airborne salinization. The extent of each degradation process is explored for the United Kingdom, Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Norway. The potential threat of salinization across the North Sea varies in a complex and diverse manner. However, we find an overall lack of data, both of water monitoring and soil sampling, on salinity in the region. For agricultural systems in the region to adapt against future salinization risk, more extensive mapping and monitoring of salinization need to be conducted, along with the development of appropriate land management practices.
Parental executive functioning (EF) and parenting behaviors can be affected by the multiple stressors that are often present during early parenthood. However, little is known about how commonly ...experienced psychological distress during early parenthood is associated with parental EF capacity. We explored the links between psychological distress and EFs in a general population sample of 150 Finnish birth cohort mothers with 2.5-year-old children. The symptoms of depression, anxiety, insomnia, and poor couple relationship adjustment were measured with the self-report questionnaires EPDS, SCL-90, AIS, and RDAS. EFs were assessed with five computerized Cogstate tasks. When the psychological distress measures were added to a hierarchical regression analysis as continuous variables, no significant single or additive associations with EFs were found. When the distress measures were dichotomized to compare symptoms below/above cutoffs indicating clinically elevated levels, single distress domains remained as non-significant predictors, but a cumulative risk index of the number of concurrent clinically elevated distress domains was significantly associated with EFs. Thus, mothers with a higher number of concurrent clinically elevated psychological distress domains (i.e., depression, anxiety, insomnia, and poor couple relationship adjustment) tended to have lower EFs. This association is possibly bi-directional – clinically elevated distress within several domains could have a cumulative, depleting effect on maternal EF capacity, but a lower EF capacity could also increase the vulnerability for experienced distress within several concurrent domains. Longitudinal studies are needed to clarify potential causal links between stressors and EF.
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