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A variety of coastal systems produce a large number of goods and services that are valuable to society. This has attracted many people and major investments to coastal zones, even to places that are susceptible to hazards such as storm surges and coastal erosion. In many places, technology has been instrumental in reducing society's vulnerability to coastal hazards, in three basic ways:
Extensive research has shown that climate change will increase the hazard
potential for many coastal zones. The same three strategies of protect, retreat
and accommodate can be followed to reduce vulnerability to climate change, including
application of the same range of hard and soft technologies as are used today.
However, many of the world's vulnerable coastal countries currently do not have
access to appropriate adaptation technologies, nor to the knowledge or resources
that are required to develop or implement these. Effective coastal adaptation
by these countries could benefit from increasing current efforts of technology
transfer.
This chapter uses the term "technology" in its broadest possible sense,
including knowledge. A technology is considered appropriate when it is environmentally
sound, economically viable and culturally and socially acceptable, amongst other
criteria. The extent to which a technology meets these criteria differs from
one location to another, suggesting that the appropriateness of a technology
is not universal but-at least in part-determined by local factors. Technology
transfer, as explained in Chapter 1, is the broad set
of processes covering the exchange of knowledge, money and goods amongst different
stakeholders that lead to the spreading of technology for adapting to or mitigating
climate change.
Coastal adaptation to climate change must be seen as part of a broader coastal-management
policy, which includes consideration of numerous non-climatic issues (Harvey
et al., 1999). It typically follows a continuous and iterative cycle involving
four main steps: (i) information development and awareness raising, (ii) planning
and design, (iii) implementation and (iv) monitoring and evaluation (Klein et
al., 1999). To date, technology transfer for coastal adaptation has focused
primarily on the implementation stage: the actual hardware that can be employed
to protect or, to a lesser extent, retreat or accommodate. As argued by Klein
et al. (1999), coastal adaptation should also aim at increasing the extent to
which mechanisms are in place and technologies, expertise and other resources
are available to assist the other three steps.
Section 15.3 therefore identifies available technologies
for each of the four steps of adaptation, with Section 15.4
assessing current and future trends in the transfer of these technologies. Sections
15.5 and 15.6 analyses important barriers and opportunities
for coastal-technology transfer in light of economic, institutional, legal and
socio-cultural aspects, within and between countries respectively. Section
15.7 summarises the lessons learnt and suggests future actions. First, however,
Section 15.2 gives an overview of anticipated coastal
impacts of climate change and concurrent non-climate stresses affecting coastal-adaptation
needs.
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