For resilient rural shorelines: reviewing Nature-based Solutions for flood risk reduction in small coastal communities

Coastal flood risk poses a serious, existential threat to shoreline populations around the world both now and in the future. Unsurprisingly, global decision makers are considering their options – one of these being Nature-based Solutions – for effective disaster risk reduction which specifically targets coastal flooding. While strides have been made in the field of Nature-based Solutions for coastal flooding, much of this attention has been directed towards the urban setting, with a wealth of scholastic documentation to support this notion. The sizeable rural populations scattered throughout the world's small coastal communities, meanwhile, have been largely neglected in academic literature. Without this information, it is impossible to properly capture the full potential of Nature-based Solutions in (global) flood risk modelling endeavours or understand their role in the future of equitable disaster risk reduction. In light of this gap, we have reviewed the limited amount of existing literature from around the world involving the implementation and effectiveness of Nature-based Solutions in small coastal communities. We analysed 28 peer-reviewed studies to gather common themes and insights about the barriers and opportunities unique to these rural shorelines. Takeaways we have identified include a near consistent scarcity of resources (e.g., technical, financial, institutional) to implement disaster risk reduction measures; an abundance of space and opportune land use regimes which make Nature-based Solutions a highly plausible option; amplified nature contributions to people leading to larger benefits reaped from investments into Nature-based Solutions; and the presence of local knowledge regarding societal norms, climate patterns, and ecosystem capabilities. We argue that these four common themes point to the fact that more attention must be given to coastal flooding-focused Nature-based Solutions in the rural setting. As such, we present this collation as a starting point for future projects of similar setting and scope. We also recommend improving benefit-cost analysis methods as well as including local knowledge and other perspectives in future global assessments of coastal flood risk.