The Making Space for Sand Project
The Making Space for Sand project is one of 25 projects funded by Defra as part of the £200 million Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme (FCRIP). The programmes will drive innovation in flood and coastal resilience and adaptation to a changing climate.
The aim of the Making Space for Sand Project is to provide a better understanding of the problems associated with sea level rise, coastal change and coastal erosion, encouraging a more sustainable use and development of the coastal fringe and allowing for a more natural, ecosystem approach to coastal management.
Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme
The Flood and Coastal Resilience Innovation Programme (FCRIP) is part of the government's National Flood and Coastal Erosion Risk Management Strategy for England. The strategy’s vision is for England to be a nation ready for, and resilient to, flooding and coastal change - today, tomorrow and to the year 2100.
The FCRIP programme aims to:
- encourage local authorities, businesses and communities to test and demonstrate innovative practical resilience actions in their areas,
- improve the resilience of 25 local areas, reducing the costs of future damage and disruption from flooding and coastal erosion,
- improve evidence on the costs and benefits of the innovative resilience actions and demonstrate how different actions work together across geographical areas,
- use the evidence and learning developed to inform future approaches to, and investments in, flood and coastal erosion risk management.
Objectives of the Making Space for Sand project
Beaches and sand dunes are important, highly mobile, coastal features, responding to short-term weather events and longer-term climate forces. Though beaches and sand dunes absorb some of the impacts of these events, human use and development of these environments has left some of them unnaturally constrained and in poor condition.
Without changes to the management of beaches and dunes they risk being squeezed out, which could result in a more enhanced rate of erosion, compounding the problem faced by landowners and communities located behind them.
The project objective is to help build community resilience by “Making Space for Sand” and adopting a more ecosystem approach to reduce community vulnerability to some of the impacts associated with rising seas.
The project will achieve this through a process of information gathering and the use of cutting-edge modelling of coastal processes. This information will be interpreted into more accessible formats for wider engagement with communities and landowners.
Engagement will be based on the data project partners collect, analyse and share, which help coastal communities and wider stakeholders understand and appreciate the changes we are likely to see on the coastline.
With community and landowners support the project will help facilitate the development of adaptation and resilience plans, and in some instances deliver some interventions.
Who is delivering the Making Space for Sand project?
Making Space for Sand is a collaborative project and the principal delivery partners associated with it are:
- Cornwall Council, who as lead partner will manage and oversee all aspects of the project's delivery.
- Cornwall Community Flood Forum, who will support the delivery of community stakeholder engagement and develop a short film about the project.
- South West Coastal Monitoring (SWCM), who will undertake a detailed monitoring programme, manage the CoastSnap community science program and help support stakeholder engagement.
- University of Plymouth (UoP), who will investigate and model coastal processes and sediment movement to help us better understand what coastal change will look like in the future.
- Cornwall Wildlife Trust who will provide environmental assessments, develop beach dune management plans and support community stakeholder engagement.
Where is MS4S being delivered?
The Making Space for Sand project considers forty locations on the north and south coastline of Cornwall. All of the sites are very different from one another and its not possible for all locations to receive the same level of treatment.
Research will be considered where there is the greatest opportunity for learning. Engagement will focus on areas where there is potential, from both communities and landowners, to help deliver adaptation interventions that can be used to help demonstrate to others what can be achieved. To learn more about where the project is delivering outputs, please visit the project Locations page.