Case: Ocean Governance for Coastal Protection
ResourcesCase: Ocean Governance for Coastal Protection
Related Initiative
What is this about?
Project context: A team of academic experts on ocean governance, disaster research, coastal ecosystems, and sustainability, develops a guideline for coastal protection by maintenance of natural systems such as mangrove forests. As case studies, the team works with Tsunami protection projects in Indonesia and flood prevention projects in Cameroon. Their approach is built on community empowerment and stakeholder engagement. They gain insights into local practices and knowledge and examine different upscaling pathways to apply successful approaches in other regions or to other contexts. As part of the idea, they connect communities such as fishers and farmers with policy-makers and economic actors.
Ethics self-assessment, part 7: Environment
Our research applies knowledge co-production methodology such as participatory workshops and social labs. These interventions involve indigenous communities and marginalised groups. It is of utmost importance to recognise and follow codes of conduct for transdisciplinary research involving these communities. Moreover, we are committed to a decolonial and epistemically just approach to collaborative science, recognising diverse ways of knowing and being. This commitment is expressed in research protocols, clear benefit sharing strategies, and community empowerment (research with communities, not on them). This is an environmental ethical dimension since local communities have ecosystem and sustainability knowledge that might be lost or unrecognised if our transdisciplinary approach is defined too narrowly and incautiously.
The environmental risks of our research process itself are minimal. We will reduce our travels to a minimum and choose sustainable ways of travelling wherever possible in order to reduce our carbon footprint. However, we understand ecological implications in a wider context, here. The outcome of our research shall impact environmental policy and governance. New approaches to coastal protection, flood prevention, and Tsunami preparedness will have an impact on coastal communities as well as on the physical maintenance of coastal facilities and ecosystems. Strategies and guidelines developed in this project need to be assessed in terms of their potential to disrupt current practices, conflict with environmental regulations and laws, or challenge contemporary frameworks such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The complexity of policy interventions may lead to adverse effects on ecosystems. Thus, supervising governance processes and anticipating future effects of these changes have been made a central part of this project.
