A roadmap for coordinated landscape-scale coastal and marine ecosystem restoration

PROJECT 1.6

The Challenge:

Large-scale restoration in marine and coastal systems is essential and prominent in high level declarations such as CITES, the UN Sustainable Development Goals (2030), and UN Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2020-2031). Marine restoration projects in Australia, as in most countries, have typically been small scale, experimental, and lacking coordination. Uncoordinated approaches to restoration can result in inefficient use of resources with poor social and environmental outcomes, such as lack of confidence and support for restoration, or low delivery of ecosystem services. At present, there is currently little coordinated long term planning for coastal marine restoration nationally, nor in terms of what is possible now or in future as the climate changes.

The Solution:

This project will develop a roadmap to guide research and investment into landscape-scale coastal and marine restoration. The project brings together interdisciplinary expertise in coastal engineering, decision theory, marine ecology, modelling and ecosystem services to examine decision support needs and opportunities to restore coastal marine ecosystems at scale. The research will focus on the ecosystem services of coastal protection and climate resilience with the recognition that this Nature-based Solution (NbS) approach provides co-benefits such as biodiversity, fisheries production, carbon sequestration, and nutrient cycling. The research will be accomplished through surveys and workshops/meetings with input from key end user groups in industry, NGO, Indigenous and Governmental organisations.

Project Location:

National

FINAL REPORT

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