Lesson video

Hello there.

Welcome to today's geography lesson with me, Ms. Roberts.

This is the next lesson in our unit of work all about our coastlines.

In this unit, we are investigating what shapes life at the coast.

In today's lesson, we are gonna be thinking about the ways in which us humans help to manage our coastlines.

By the end of the lesson today, you are going to be able to explain why different stakeholders have varying views about coastal management.

Before we start the lesson, I'd like to look at some very important key terms. These are geographical terms that you're going to hear a lot in this lesson and that I would like you to be able to use yourself when you are talking about coastal management.

The first two key words are hard engineering and soft engineering.

Hard engineering is building fixed structures which help to reduce coastal erosion and soft engineering is when we try to work with nature to reduce coastal erosion.

We'll find out more about both of those in this lesson.

The next key word you have already heard, and that's stakeholder.

Now a stakeholder is a person.

And it's a person who has a particular interest in any given resource.

So in this case, the resource is our coastline.

And a stakeholder is any person who has an interest or an opinion or some involvement in what happens to that coastline.

And finally, risk.

Risk is a danger, a possibility that something bad, something unpleasant could happen.

For example, getting injured.

There will be two halves to today's lesson.

First, we're going to think about how we manage our coastlines, and then later, we're gonna be thinking about how people feel about the way we manage our coastlines.

In the UK, our coastline is shaped by natural processes.

Those processes are erosion, transportation, and deposition.

Our coast looks the way it does because of those natural processes.

We can't stop those natural processes from happening.

They have always happened and they will continue to happen.

What we can do though is interact with our coastlines through coastal management to help reduce the risks that those natural processes present to our coasts.

The two main methods that we use to interact with the coastline in this way are hard engineering and soft engineering.

You can see this beautiful beach here in the photograph and that structure you can see there is one example of hard engineering.

We'll find out exactly what that structure is in a moment.

First, let's think about the reasons why coastal management is so important, especially for nations like the UK, which is an island nation.

The use of hard engineering and soft engineering on our coastlines is primarily done to reduce risk.

They reduce risks of damaging or potentially dangerous events happening at the coasts.

These events could include things like the shoreline or the cliff retreating further and further back.

That puts villages, towns, settlements, farms, that are close to the cliff line at great risk of falling into the sea.

Cliffs may also collapse if they are not managed.

The sign here you can see is from a local council in the UK where a cliff collapse has been experienced.

Coastal areas can often experience severe flooding, landslides, rockfall from the cliffs, and also, coastal erosion that happens along our coasts is a risk to the beach itself because beaches can actually be destroyed.

Before we move on, let's stop now just briefly to check our learning so far.

I'd like you to answer this quick multiple choice question.

How does coastal management make life safer for people living at the coast? A, it provides jobs for locals.

B, it reduces potential dangers.

Or C, it makes the coast look nicer.

Make your decision now.

Ready? It's because it reduces potential dangers.

If we want to be able to enjoy our coastlines and be able to use them in ways that we are used to, they have to be safe places to live, to work, and to enjoy them.

So let's look some more now at these methods of hard engineering and soft engineering.

We are going to start with hard engineering.

As we mentioned earlier, hard engineering is about construction.

It's about building fixed structures at the coast.

These include groynes.

The picture you saw at the start of the lesson was of a groyne.

Sea walls, you might be familiar with having seen these at the coast.

And gabions.

If you look on the right hand side of the photo, you'll see rocks behind wire that look a bit like a wall.

Those are actually gabions.

Hard engineering plans like these can take a long time to construct.

They also cost a lot of money to build and a lot of people have very different views about them.

For example, looking at the groynes, some people think that they are ugly and they spoil the natural landscape because it's no longer one stretch of beautiful golden sand.

Soft engineering on the other hand, does not involve construction.

Soft engineering is about working with nature.

Some examples of different types of soft engineering are beach replenishment and dune stabilisation.

These help to combat risks of erosion in a natural way.

They also help to prevent flooding.

They usually cost a lot less than hard engineering, and people are often more favourable of them because they don't spoil the natural landscape in the same way that building a construction at the coast does.

So were you paying attention to those photographs you've just been seeing? Which of these photographs A, B, or C, is an example of hard engineering? Have you chosen? It's option B.

And what type of hard engineering is it? It's a groyne.

Well done.

Option A there is dune stabilisation and option C is beach replenishment.

So coastal management.

Where do these projects happen? How do we carry out this hard engineering and soft engineering? Well, in England and Wales, it's the local councils in the coastal areas who are primarily responsible for management of the coastline.

They work alongside our government as well as other agencies, and they implement things called shoreline management plans or SMPs.

There are 22 areas or 22 SMPs around the coastline of England and Wales.

In other parts of the UK, it works in a similar way, but there are different bodies that are responsible for coastal management.

Have a look at that map there.

Can you find the SMP that is closest to where you live? We are going to look at one of these areas in particular, and it happens to be the SMP in the part of the country where I live.

This is SMP 22.

This is on the coastline, which faces the Irish Sea in the northwest of England and the north of Wales.

It starts at a place called Llandudno in North Wales at a point known as the Great Arm, which is a headlands that sticks out into the sea there.

It ends a lot further north.

In fact, it ends right at the border between England and Scotland.

The area covered by SMP 22 stretches across the coastlines of 14 different local council areas.

It's those local councils as well as six other groups like charities, organisations such as the National Trust who help to look after our beautiful natural landscapes, and they work together as a body alongside the Environment Agency, which is the branch of our government to look after this area of coastline.

Before we find out some more about this area, let's check that you've been listening with another quick multiple choice question.

What does SMP stand for? Shoreline Maintenance Plan, Shoreline Management Protocol, or Shoreline Management Plan.

Make your choice now.

Ready? An SMP is a shoreline management plan.

These are the plans that help us to manage our coastlines.

Let's look in some more detail now at SMP 22 and what's happening there.

Let's begin by exploring what happens at this coastline.

What is it like? What's going on there? It's a very diverse coastline.

That means it's got lots of different places and spaces and is used in many different ways.

Here are pictures of just some different aspects of the landscape that you can see in this area.

This area has major ports.

It has residential areas like the large city of Liverpool.

It also has industrial areas, tourist resorts, historical and cultural sites, beautiful beaches, tall cliffs, sand dunes, marshes, wetlands, lots of islands are found off this coastline as well.

And there are many beautiful bays.

So with all of those different features, there are a lot of things to think about.

Having such a diverse coastline means that no single management strategy in itself is enough.

We have to adapt our coastal management strategies to different parts of the coastline.

For example, we can build sea walls where there is a risk of flooding.

This will help to protect residential areas or industrial areas along the coastline.

It will even help to protect tourist resorts.

This is an example of hard engineering.

But hard engineering like building a sea wall isn't going to work everywhere.

So perhaps we can look at dune stabilisation instead.

This helps to strengthen the natural defences against coastal erosion.

In other areas, there may be cliffs that are starting to collapse.

There may be worries of landslides.

We can use gabions to stabilise cliffs and help to reduce the risk of rockfall and landslides.

Another type of hard engineering.

All of these different methods are used in different places in the area covered by SMP 22.

There are sea walls to protect the tourist resort of black pool and other resorts along the coast, especially in North Wales as well.

We have dune stabilisation happening in Lytham and Formby and other places.

And gabions are used on cliffs across the coast of North Wales, Wirral, and further north.

Let's take a moment for this quick activity.

I would like you to complete the blanks in this sentence.

Pause the video now and press play again to reveal the answers.

Are you ready? This is what the sentence should say.

The risk of erosion along a coastline can be reduced using a range of hard or soft engineering strategies.

Well done.

Okay, time for an activity now to bring together what we know so far about coastal management.

The map you can see here shows an area of the North Wales coast.

This is part of the area covered by SMP 22.

I would like you to complete these three tasks using this map.

I want you to identify a coastal management that has been used here that you can see on the map.

I want you to tell me whether it is hard engineering or soft engineering.

And thirdly, I would like you to explain why you think coastal management is important in this area.

Have a good look at the map and look for other features to help you explain why.

Pause the video now and when you return, I'll share some example answers with you.

Ready? Great.

Okay, let's have a look first.

What type of coastal management did you identify? On the map, we can clearly see that there are groynes that have been built along the beach.

Groynes are a type of hard engineering and that's done to help reduce the erosion of the coast.

And thirdly, on the map, I found that there was a caravan park.

There's also a coastal path, there are roads, there are car parks, and there's a railway line.

If there were no coastal management in place, then those things would all be at risk because of the erosion of the coastline.

The groynes are there to protect the beach, which protect the coast because the beach isn't eroded away, which would expose the coastline to more erosion.

Good job.

So now we're gonna move into the second part of this lesson and we're gonna think about how people feel about the ways we manage our coasts.

Stakeholders are groups of people or individuals who could be affected by a coastal management plan or any other project.

In this case, we are thinking specifically about coasts, but any major projects always have stakeholders.

So some examples of stakeholders in this situation to do with coasts include the local residents, the people that live there, farmers who use the land for their income, conservationists who are interested in the plants and animals of an area, the local council and the government who have a responsibility for keeping people safe.

And then of course, in the UK, a lot of people rely on the fishing industry.

There are actually many businesses that take place at the coast.

Remember in the previous activity, we talked about the caravan park.

Look at that lovely picture of the coastline there.

There's lots of people interacting with the coast in different ways.

I can see some fishing vessels.

I can see lots of families on the beach.

They may be residents, they could be tourists.

There is some accommodation in houses there.

I'm sure that some of those will actually be small businesses.

They're all examples of stakeholders in that coastal area.

And whenever a coastal management plan is proposed or put forward, a range of stakeholders must be considered.

These different stakeholders can have lots of varying opinions, and that's because their own interests and their own priorities are different.

They're going to be affected in different ways to each other.

Here are some examples of stakeholders.

Councils.

They are stakeholders.

They are the ones that need to find the funding for the coastal management plans.

The residents, all those people playing on the beach and living in those houses.

They want to enjoy their coasts safely and protect their homes.

We've mentioned the fishing industry and farming in coastal areas.

Those people have livelihoods to support, jobs to do, people to pay.

Conservationists and environmental groups want to protect animal and plant species that we find in our natural places.

So all of those different stakeholders together have very different opinions and concerns about our coastal management strategies.

Let's have a quick stop before we think some more about those stakeholders.

Which of the stakeholders we've thought about so far would be most concerned with the financial cost of a coastal management plan? Would that be the council, the residents, the local fishing industry or marine environmental groups? Have you chosen one? It's the local council.

They're the ones that need to find the funding for these management plans to happen.

Stakeholders use the coast in different ways as we have mentioned.

Let's have a look at some of the questions that stakeholders may have about coastal management.

Where will the money come from for the project? How much will it cost? How long will it take to do the construction work? Can residents and tourists still access the coast? Will the plans mean lots of traffic in town? What will it look like when the work's finished? And will plants and animals be protected or will they be displaced? These are all valid concerns for different people.

Depending on a stakeholder's point of view, they may have very different opinions about coastal management.

Their opinions may include, "Sea walls are ugly and they spoil the views.

I don't want to look at a wall." Someone else may think hard engineering is too expensive.

So soft engineering is a better choice.

Another person might believe that there are rare animals there and we can't just destroy their habitats.

Someone else may think that the noise from the work will put off the tourists.

We don't want to lose business.

Another person might think we should just leave the coast alone and let erosion happen naturally.

While someone else may think that coastal management is essential or we risk losing our homes.

These are all very different yet very valid opinions.

And when coastal management strategies are put forward, all of these opinions must be considered.

Here are three examples of opinions that you've just seen.

I would like you to have a think, which of these is most likely to be the opinion of somebody who is a hotel owner at a coastal resort? A, hard engineering is too expensive, soft engineering is a better choice.

B, there are rare animals.

We can't destroy their habitats.

And C, the noise from the work we'll put off tourists, we will lose business.

Have you chosen one? It's option C.

The hotel owner's main priority is to protect their income and their business, which comes from the tourist industry.

So essentially for them, they don't want to lose that business.

So let's go back now to this covered by SMP 22, the North of Wales and Northwest of England.

This is a hugely diverse coastline and there are a great range of stakeholders.

So let's have a look at some examples of those now.

Thousands of residents live and work along this stretch of coastline.

I'm one of those residents.

Coastal resorts here are used for tourism.

Places like Southport, Rhyl, and Blackpool are popular tourist resorts and they're essential sources of income for the people that work there in that industry.

The area is a travel hub.

It provides a lot of important ferry links between the UK and island, as well as having large ports like Seaforth in Liverpool, which imports and exports billions of pounds worth of cargo and product between the UK and other places every year.

Other stakeholders include people using the coastline for leisure.

Lots of leisure activities happen along this coastline like surfing, sailing, swimming, as well as walking and hiking along the many coastal paths in the area.

Some parts of the coastline are specially designated nature reserves, such as an area called the Dee Estuary.

These areas are special nature reserves because there are some very unique animals and plants that are found there.

For example, seals and birds and special coastal plants.

Fishing is traditionally a big industry in the northwest of England.

Fishing generates lots of jobs, not only on boats out catching fish, but within our coastal communities as well.

Places such as Morecambe and the Wirral benefit greatly from the fishing industry.

All of those people that we have mentioned are stakeholders.

So when any kind of coastal management strategy is proposed, they must be considered and their opinions given some thought.

So bearing that in mind, would this statement be true or false? What do you think? When a coastal management plan is proposed, most stakeholders will share the same views about the project.

True or false? Ready? I think it's false.

Do you agree? Okay.

Can you tell me why you think it's false? Did you say something like this? Stakeholders all have different opinions because their interests and their priorities differ.

They interact with the coastline in different ways to each other and therefore they will be impacted by any coastal management and changes that brings about in different ways.

Have a look here now at the map.

This is the same area you looked at earlier.

We know that a hard engineering project was carried out here and that was to instal those groynes that we can see all along this Welsh coast.

I want you to study this map again and I want you to identify three different stakeholders that would've had an interest in that project.

For each of the stakeholders you identify, I want you to describe one thing they would be concerned about and one opinion they may have.

Concerns should be phrased as questions.

Pause the video now and when you return, I'll share some ideas with you.

Okay, ready? Let's first think about these stakeholders.

So I have picked out the local residents, the people who live there.

Local business owners like the owner of the caravan park that we can see here.

There's actually several caravan parks you could have.

You could have noticed any of them.

And finally, I am using hikers because we can see that there is a coastal path here, which is going to be used for leisure by people to enjoy the coastline.

So, here are their concerns and their opinions.

Your answers may be similar to these.

Local residents' concerns may include, "Can we still use the beach? How long will it take to build the groynes? Will the work be noisy and cause lots of traffic? Will our homes be protected from coastal erosion?" Their opinions could include, "I think we should protect the beach from erosion.

So the groynes are a good plan.

Our homes are at risk if we don't do something." The concerns of local business owners may Include, "Will the groynes spoil the view of the beach for the tourists? Will my caravan park lose business?" And they may be of the opinion.

"I don't want tourists to be put off because I will lose customers.

I can't afford to lose money." Hikers that like to use the coastal path in the area may have concerns such as, "Can we still access the coastal path during the work? What about after the work?" They may be of the opinion that, "If the groynes protect the coastal path, I'd support the plan.

I want to enjoy the coast." You may have chosen different stakeholders with different opinions.

You may have thought about the local council.

You may have thought about other aspects of how this coastline is used.

Well done for your hard work in today's lesson.

We have looked at a lot of information about coastal management.

So let's review what we now know.

Management plans are in place in order to protect the coast.

In England and Wales, local councils work with the government to implement shoreline management plans.

Hard and soft engineering can be used to help protect coastal areas from erosion.

There are different groups of stakeholders in coastal areas.

Different stakeholders support different coastal management plans.

Well done for listening today.

I hope you enjoyed finding out about coastal management plans and thinking about how so many different people are involved with our coastlines in so many different ways.

Join me next time for another lesson about what shapes life at the coast.

Bye for now.