Inventing the managed realignment of the coast: Trying ‘to live with nature not defeat her’

Abstract

Climate change and rising sea levels have led to managed realignment at the coast, but the practice of realignment has an ambiguous socioecological identity that has hindered its widespread use. Realignment represents the realization of the nature-based coastal management strategies first proposed in the United States during the Shoreline Debate of the early 1980s. It was put into practice in 1990 on Northey Island, Essex, as an experimental response to coastal erosion, and has subsequently become relatively widespread on the British coast. Realignment has been represented either as a form of ecological modernisation or as a rewilding, though it can challenge both these understandings through the radical ambiguity of the ‘wild experiments’ it produces. This ambiguity, however, means that while realignment has the potential to enable a structural transformation of socioecological relations at the coast, it has commonly only been used for the purposes of pragmatic environmental reform.