Shifting Shores and Shoring Shifts—How Can Beach Managers Lead Transformative Change? A Study on Challenges and Opportunities for Ecosystem-Based Management

Abstract

Beaches provide a range of ecosystem services (ES). They are increasingly impacted by climate change, among other stressors. Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is an approach to cope with a changing environment and ensure long-term ES provision. Local managers may facilitate beach EBM implementation by integrating it into existing governance systems. However, their role in EBM implementation needs clarifying. This paper assesses local government beach managers’ perceptions and visions of improvement of the beach ES governance network to face a changing environment. We present a structural analysis of data from the northern coast 1 Corresponding author: marina.ribeiro.correa@usp.br. Human Ecology Review, Volume 26, Number 2, 2020 60 of São Paulo state (Brazil) and discuss opportunities and challenges for a regional EBM implementation. Our results point to the local beach managers as potential leaders of transformations towards sustainability.