Vulnerability of remote coastal communities to water challenges: Perception, valuation and coping mechanisms
Project Lead
Challenges
In many parts of the world, climate change is predicted to lead to more extreme weather patterns, including rainfall and affecting the availability of freshwater. The impact of those events raises concerns about meeting the demands for water and food in the future. Management measures are needed to alleviate the negative consequences of water scarcity (whether from drought, or poor water quality) and floods on water and food systems. While many countries have developed expertise in dealing with floods and droughts, some face novel challenges.
One issue that has been mostly overlooked thus far, including in current UK water management frameworks, is dealing with relative water scarcity in regions that are traditionally percieved as water abundant. In the popular imagination, Scotland is a water-abundant country, where droughts are not an area of concern. The Scottish Government’s Hydro Nation policy is built on the idea that the country has abundant water resources, which shape the nation’s character, economy, and society. Thus, it is of particular interest to understand how people adapt and respond to all forms of water challenges in Scotland.
In the climate emergency, place-based action and policy are crucial to building sustainable, resilient, and adaptive communities. Policy mechanisms, which have the flexibility to reflect community diversity and therefore deliver focused and appropriate policy responses to crises, are imperative if we are to empower communities to adapt and effectively manage their natural resources. At the heart of this lies the need to adopt and support partnership working and community involvement for tailored policy responses.
It is well understood that action at the local level is often the underpinning support in times of crisis. This has been observed repeatedly for flooding events in the UK, and, it has been seen as a widespread reaction to the Covid-19 pandemic. However, there is often a disconnect between local action and needs, and the institutional-level policies which govern them, leading to inefficient use of social capital, disengagement and increased vulnerability of local communities. More knowledge is required to explore how communities perceive water challenges and act and react to develop resilience to a changing water environment.
Questions
- Water scarcity and drought - what are the risks and vulnerabilities within Scotland, and how do we build resilience?
- Flood risk management - how can we continue to reduce the risk and impact of flooding, build resilience and maximise the benefits of nature-based solutions?
- Water governance – how can we innovate, adapt and improve the governance and management of water?
Solutions
This project aims to determine what drives the response of remote coastal communities to existing and anticipated water challenges in Scotland, addressing the risk of low flows and water scarcity, as well as high flows.
Understanding different views and discourses
We are using a mixed-method approach to evaluate the perspectives of different groups of stakeholders and will offer an opportunity to identify points about which different groups of people agree or disagree. This highlights the potential for additional support or further work done to connect different scales of community and sectors in collectively addressing water issues. The findings provide lessons for the water management process across Scotland but identify ways in which connectivity across scales can be improved. This varies for different locations within the country.
Case Studies
The development of five case studies allows for in-depth data to be gathered on specific real-world situations, in a variety of formats which give full coverage to the breadth of the situation to provide a detailed evaluation of how several different communities have dealt with water challenges (including successes and barriers). The key issues include seasonal water scarcity, poor water quality, mains connectivity, flooding, and conflict over water needs. The case studies help to identify examples of good practice, opportunities for social learning and areas of vulnerability for communities. These findings allow focused and reflective policy design for future water challenges, especially through the development of considerations that should be made on a place-based basis.
Network Analysis
We develop a policy and stakeholder network through desk-based research and co-creation exercises with key industry stakeholders. This allows for the mapping of influential policies and their impact on high-level decision-making. The resulting database will be transformed into a network database. The network database is being used with new software programmes, to map social policy and stakeholder information networks. This network map is being analysed using social network analysis. Specifically, we identify the most influential policies and information sources.
Co-production of tools
A process of co-production and creative design based on input from a range of participants allows the key themes and issues identified through the research process to be collated into useful data and communicated with extensive communities within Scotland. Co-creative methods such as participatory video-making, experiential knowledge sharing or design thinking are being used to integrate lessons from across the scales and sectors and produce a networking tool to connect vulnerable communities and those with skills and experience to share, and packages of information regarding key water issues, accessible to any interested community.
Overall, this project and the resulting guidance, communication and networking tools are helping to join up policy development with community-level knowledge and action, to prepare and enhance community resilience if and when water-related challenges arise.
Project Partners
Progress
Understanding different views and discourses
We have employed a social science technique called the Q-method to understand the perspectives and priorities of stakeholders in coastal communities around water. A concourse of statements was created by drawing from academic literature, social media, traditional media and other discourse, to represent a range of views across different water challenges. Participants were identified from a key range of stakeholders, including coastal residents and businesses to decision-makers and industry representatives. Each participant sorted the statements into a priority matrix, and then discussed their views and motivations in a semi-structured interview. Overall, 22 participants were interviewed to provide a baseline on the range of perspectives around the issues.
Initial results showed an interesting grouping of perspectives among participants: for examples, one group could be characterised as highly risk-aware and prioritising adaptation in place. There were also key themes that emerged, such as prioritising multiple benefits from single solutions, required developments in two-way communication channels, and highlighting roles, expertise and skills across stakeholders. We are producing a short dissemination document for all stakeholders, and following up this first stage with a knowledge exchange workshop which will allow us to determine the ground truth and explore the motivations underlying the themes.
This first stage has provided a useful baseline for the next part of the project, that will focus on the objective to identify coping and adaptation strategies to water challenges. This objective will be met by following up on the initial stakeholder interviews with the development of case studies to highlight positive solutions across coastal communities. These results and narratives will then be used to support the wider policy and communication objectives to map institutional and governance approaches with localised needs and to develop policy guidance and communication tools to facilitate robust responsed to future water challenges in remote coastal communities.
Recommendations arising from the overall project
Engaging communities on water-related issues:
- Try to make water-related challenges relevant and tangible for communities to encourage engagement.
- Addressing water issues could unlock discussion around other rural development challenges such as housing, economy and population.
- Raising awareness of water systems and challenges could help to reduce consumption.
- Ensure that messaging, management and policy are place-based or sufficiently adaptable to be relevant to remote coastal locations.
Social development for communities:
- Make community action more accessible for people with less time or experience.
- Support communication between all groups involved in development, e.g., community members, community councils, planners, housing developers, service providers, etc.
- Promote the sharing of experiences and knowledge between communities to support social learning.
- Account for different knowledge types to make communication accessible and far-reaching.
- Utilise collective knowledge or advice, e.g., via an umbrella organisation to support communities in development projects.
Challenges encountered during the project
- Engaging with communities and/or participants can be challengning and might require much time. This can partly be due to participation fatigue as well as limited community resources (many of the participants involved were already carrying out voluntary roles in addition to their own paid employment).
- Some communities did not recognise their own water vulnerabilities or are undervaluing their efforts/contributions.
- Although planning for in-person, personal and interactive methods (especially in relation to the case studies), most participants preferred to engage in remote or online/phone interviews. This reduced the level of interaction for some of the case studies, however, it is important to utilise methods where are accessible and convenient for the participants.
Good practice
- Despite preferences to engage in remote formats of data collection, site visits were seen as beneficial in terms of providing visual/spatial/cultural context and opportunities for further engagement with other participants. Therefore, site visits for case studies should be encouraged for future use of these approaches.
- The layered design of the project meant that networks and relationships could be built over time, allowing more meaningful interactions with participants and communities, and the opportunity for participants to feed into the research design.
This project is now complete.