Helpful Guides to Coastal Research

These documents guide you through the steps, methods and other considerations for applying coastal research to various issues and challenges.

Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change: A Scenario Planning Tool

This scenario planning tool is for a hypothetical Australian coastal zone in the Big Bonanza Region. It is designed for use by governments and communities to explore the governance implications of coastal adaptation.

As the tool relates to a hypothetical coast it will be useful for education and communication support in contexts where the local issues are very sensitive and/or no spatially explicit planning or discussions have yet commenced.

The tool consists of:

Discourse Analysis Guide

The way in which we think, write and talk about the coast has important implications for the way in which it is understood and subsequently governed. While language may be thought of as mere semantics, discourse theory highlights the importance of understanding the ideological work that language does (Fairclough, 1992).

Governance Framework Analysis

Introduction

The framework in Figure 1 has been developed as the basis for ordering and analysing the themes emerging from the interviews and workshops undertaken over the duration of the Governance Theme’s research.  Four ‘domains of influence’ relevant to the policy process are represented in the figure and it is necessary to have all of these domains represented in a dialogue if it is to create legitimate responses. The domains are:

Stakeholder Analysis Tool

Stakeholder analysis allows for the collection of knowledge and information from a wide range of sources and provides  a valuable way to identify the conflicting knowledge bases and the values that underlie them (Varvasovszky and Brugha 2000). Stakeholders (including scientists and science agencies) can be defined as:

Guidelines for Promoting Use of Coastal Champions in Social Networks

A recent study by Taylor, Cocklin and Brown (2012) developed a six-step process to be used for the development of capacity building strategies/tools for fostering environmental champions. Figure 1 outlines the six-step process. Applying this six-step process to the study of coastal champions would provide a better understanding of the ways in which coastal champions can be fostered.

References for Helpful Guides to Coastal Research