Some coastlines that would attract lots of human management are those that are areas of large settlements. When people live in a coastal area they do not want to have to move their homes and will endeavour to manage the coastline to protect their land as much as possible. This can have a terrible affect on coastlines further down the coast as the flooding will be moved them.
Areas of natural beauty such as the sand dunes in Britain and coral reefs off more tropical coasts will also have an affect on the management, if any, is used. Local government do not want to see areas such as those aforementioned to become destroyed and as a result may focus management schemes on these areas. However planners may decide to limit the amount of hard engineering used in on coral reefs and the like as this may cause the area to become unattractive, and then the main issue of protecting the landscape will be undone by mismanagement.
There may also be ecological reasons for some areas to warrant more management than other parts of the coast. For example, areas with a high proportion of habitats or areas with endangered species will incur more management than places with few habitats.
Events such as the North Sea storm surge of January and February 1953, which were expected to occur only once in 100 years, might become a 50 year, 20 year, or even 10 year event due to warming and the melting of the ice caps. This prompted the building of the Thames Barrier, as the protection for London needed to be greatly improved. Completed in 1982, it allows for the controlling of water throughout
the Thames River and the gates are raised to form a barrier across the river during flood and storm alerts. This is one case where management was needed to protect the people and property of London. If this were not constructed, areas such as Lambeth, Newham, Southwark and Westminster would be under regular threat of flooding. danger to people, property and land does not come only from direct sea
flooding. The formation of tsunamis after earthquakes is due to tectonics. Areas at risk from strong earthquake shocks are well known such as Japan, which experienced a great tragedy when a tsunami hit in 1993, but earthquake events are impossible to predict.
Some parts of the UK coastline have long attracted people; they have also attracted human interference. The only reason that coastal erosion becomes a problem is when human development is involved. Farmland is seen to be worthless in the eyes of the government, even though people's livelihoods depend upon it. Farmers on the Holderness coast receive no compensation for the loss of farmland due to coastal
management further up the coastline. The land is less valuable and the cost of management cannot be justified. Where the management is being carried out is in areas of tourism and high population. The areas need the money from tourism to retain their state of economic wealth so money from the government is poured into the area. In areas with housing on the coast, the housing has been labelled worthless as it
becomes dangerous to live there and houses are at risk from plummeting into the sea. Furthermore, coastal management generally protects areas where developments such as power stations have been built on the coast as they are of great economic wealth. When protecting these developments, the government totally disregard farmers who lose personal wealth due to their management schemes. This would explain why certain areas are given preference of management over others.
One example of a coastline with lots of coastal management is the East Sussex Coast, especially around Hastings. Coastal land uses in this area over the last 100 years has had a profound affect on this whole stretch of coastline. It has two fairly large coastal settlements, attracting a lot of tourists. This has caused the local people to want
hard engineered defences to protect their towns. There have been many changes to the coastline; the cliff face has been armoured and protected from the waves to prevent rock falls and cliff retreat. Groynes were built to the west to encourage the beach to accrete, or build up in the Victorian times. The harbour built in 1896 provides
and effective sediment trap for long shore drift. This has had the benefit of creating a well built up beach, making hard engineering unnecessary. A £1,000,000 improvement and extension into the harbour was built in the 1970s, increasing the sediment trap effect. The town was built outwards over 150 years with the buildings, the promenade and the wide beach, as the whole sea front is artificial.
However these changes have been to the detriment of areas down drift. The cliffs of Fairlight have suffered extensive and rapid cliff retreat due to mass movement causing landslides and the abandonment of houses. Pett level is below sea level, many management strategies have been put into place but it is a question now of whether the benefits outweigh the costs and whether a managed retreat should be arranged.
One example of a coastline without coastal management but in great need of it is Bangladesh. A high proportion of its land is at or around sea level. The flat islands are ideal for rice growing, explaining why there are 40 million people in the area. However, with previous storm surges drowning 40,000 people, killing crops and animals, coastal defences are needed. Unfortunately with Bangladesh being an LEDC it just does not have the funding and has to cope merely with soft engineering strategies of planting Mangrove trees. Other particularly densely populated parts of the world are at risk; regions like the Nile in Egypt, and the Ganges in Bangladesh. These are LEDC’s who are unable to afford the kind of coastal protection they wish, however the Maas in the Netherlands already has many coastal defences in place showing great effectiveness.
Coastlines attract more management than others depending on a variety of variables; the human influence on the area, the affect that waves have on the area and the environmental significance of the area. If, in one certain area, one of these criteria does not have the same level of importance as another area, then the latter should be favoured. This may not always be the case, however, as certain parts of the coast have a far greater influence on governmental policy than others, and if the area can afford to have a management scheme in place, then this throws the theory that coastlines are managed simply on their state of being.
