Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change on the South Australian coast: a coastal community perspective

Title of the research:
Vulnerability and adaptation to climate change on the South Australian coast: a coastal
community perspective.

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Introduction
What is climate change? You need to provide some definitons here, from the current
IPCC report. Climate change is seen to be affecting the coastal populations by posing significant
challenges from a combination of the climate uncertainty and climate variability (Smith et al.,
2015). Furthermore, it also impacts a diverse range of coastal stakeholders, temporal dynamics of
the coastal areas, and spatial dynamics of the coastal systems (Palutikof et al. 2018).
The coastal areas of Australia are exposed to the different forms of extreme conditions like high
storm intensity, storm tracks, inundation and erosion due to sea level rise. While it is important
to mention that the coastal areas accommodates about 80 percent of the population, .... (Button
and Harvey, 2015).
Coastal communities are highly vulnerable to climate change impacts. Climate change
vulnerability is defined as ...... (Djouder and Boutiba 2017)
The coastline population of the South Austria is grimmer and is due to the fact that 47 percent of
the coastline area consist of sea beaches that are sandy and it is backed by the soft sediment
plains (Button and Harvey 2015). This results in a high potential of flooding due to the rise in the
sea level, foredune destabilisation and also from the recession of the shoreline. In the South
Australia, there are about 31,000 to 48,000 residents that are facing high risks.
This sentence need restructuring: Do you mean to say ‘In South Australia, a population of
31,000-48,000 lives in the coastal region who are vulnerable to climate change impacts. It has
been estimated that 30 percent of the people reside in the 2 km of the shoreline, 50 percent of the
people live within the 7 km of the shoreline (Souter and Williams 2015). There are 5,700-
7,100km of rail and road networks in the coastal region, which could be damaged due to climate

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change impacts. There are 1,300 -2,600 light and commercial buildings at risk. All these assets
add up to 47 billion Australian dollars (Souter and Williams 2015).
Now, you have to write one or two paragraphs about the importance in adapting to climate
change impacts. Use terms such as ‘reducing vulnerability’, ‘climate change adaptation’,
‘adaptive capacity’, ‘increase resilience’. You can find these from literature.
Problem statement
The topic chosen for the research is vital because recent findings suggest that the climate
system is changing at a faster rate and it has been projected that the in future the impacts of the
climate change will be severe. Due to the high emission scenario, the sea level is likely to rise up
and the it is likely to increase by a metre by the end of the century. Give the graph of emission
scenarios and associated sea level rise here.
There will be changes in the magnitude and frequency in the extreme sea level events like the
storm surges and this with the rising sea level will lead to a devastating inundation. It has also
been noted that the rise in the sea level will not stabilise till the year 2100 even if the greenhouse
gas emissions were to fall. There are evidences that suggest that the damaging and severe
tropical cyclones can occur more often and it could move further south through the west and the
east coasts in South Australia? The rising sea levels will cause increased rates of erosion and for
several beaches that are around the Australian coastline. The major uncertainties in the coastal
risks are the change in the magnitude of the sea level due to the melting of ice in the poles? and
erosion of the coasts (Government of Australia, 2019).
While much effort has been made at national level to develop online tools to determine the
vulnerability of communities, there is a gap in effort to downscale these to local council level.

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Therefore, this research will attempt to assess the vulnerability of the coastal communities that
are residing in selected local councils in South Australia using online tools available. It will then
attempt to explore whether appropriate action has been taken by these local councils to reduce
the vulnerability of communities. It will also attempt to propose feasible adaptation strategies for
the highly vulnerable communities, which could effectively minimise the impact of climate
change.
Figure 1: Map if South Australia Coastal areas [source: Bom.gov.au 2019]