Jasper Kenter, PhD researcher at ACES and Oceanlab, is starting a series of workshops with local community councils around the Forth to look at the multiple benefits of restoring habitats in the Forth estuary.
Benefits of the conservation proposals include flood protection, water quality enhancement, fish breeding and bird feeding and nesting habitat, and recreation. The workshops are an extension of work in the past summer with stakeholders from local councils, community groups and businesses.
One of the key motivations for the habitat restoration project is climate change, which will increasingly start to affect our coasts. Scotland is being ‘lifted up’ by the forces of the earth, but sea levels are rising faster than the land, with projected relative rises of up to 60 cm by 2080. Combined with increased rainfall and intensity of storm surges, this urges re-evaluation of the current system of flood management. An alternative to raising existing defences is to allow flooding in areas which have in the past been reclaimed from the sea: managed realignment. The intertidal habitat that is restored gradually becomes a sea defence in itself.
The RSPB is leading a landscape partnership that proposes to combine managed realignment and habitat creation with measures to improve access, aesthetics, interpretation, cultural heritage and skills, in a ‘Futurescape’ project, to encourage both ecological and economic regeneration of the area. The Oceanlab/ACES-led workshops will provide valuable knowledge about economic and non-economic values of ecosystem services and biodiversity, which will aid with implementation of the project. The participatory, deliberative process is also set to enhance theoretical knowledge about how people’s preferences are constructed when they are making choices in environmental valuation research.