Climate Change Adaptation in Coastal Environments: Modeling Challenges for Resource and Environmental Economists

Analysis of coastal climate change adaptation requires combining environmental and resource economics with other disciplines. Sea level rise, ocean warming and acidification, and increased storminess threaten to alter or intensify biophysical coastal changes. Communities respond in ways that neither maximize total economic value nor apply the appropriate spatial scale of policy response. Focusing on coastline change, particularly in North Carolina, we synthesize modeling approaches and empirical studies to identify research that is needed to support coastal climate adaptation policy. Modeling coastlines as coupled human–natural systems explains historical patterns of coastline change, clarifies the need for empirical estimates, and provides a roadmap for interdisciplinary policy analysis. Despite the extensive literature on coastal amenities, hazards, and ex post policy evaluation, more empirical information is needed to parameterize coupled models of complex coastal environments facing climate change. Extending coupled models of coastal adaptation to incorporate spatial dynamics and market and nonmarket values highlights fundamental problems with current governance structures. We conclude that to maximize total economic value in the coastal zone, adaptation will require governance coordination across multiple levels, attention to intensive and extensive margins of adaptation, and trade-offs across market and nonmarket values. These findings echo recent advances in fisheries bioeconomics.