Key lessons from new perspectives on Australian coastal management

Abstract

Approaches to Australian coastal management are constantly changing yet continue to fall short in terms of social-ecological resilience. We provide a commentary on contemporary Australian coastal management issues and responses, informed by a selection of papers that were invited for a Special Issue of this journal following the Australian Coastal Society's 2021 national coastal conference. The selected papers were categorised into three groupings: 1) coastal governance; 2) coastal threats and adaptation; and 3) coastal processes. They were then analysed in the context of both the unique Australian federated approach to coastal management and the international literature on coastal management. A number of findings and themes emerge. First, the paper confirms previous findings on a lack of federal leadership in Australian coastal management and lack of action on recommendations from numerous national coastal inquiries. The paper concludes that: there has been a significant reduction of coastal expertise in the federal public service; there is a lack of a well-defined broad-based federal funding mechanism for coastal management; there is a need to incorporate a sediment compartment approach in both Australian coastal planning and climate adaptation strategies; a number of coastal management instruments at the State level appear not fit for purpose; and coastal adaptation faces conflicts in balancing property rights with public coastal amenity.