Land Abandoned to the Sea: The Managed Realignment of Coastal Areas

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Significant changes are affecting coastlines around the world due to economic pressures and climate change. This book addresses the social, cultural and political context of the process of managed coastal realignment, the strategic abandonment of the coast, as a means of coping with these changes. With a specific focus on the Blackwater Estuary in Essex, Stuart Oliver analyses the cultural and social implications of managed retreat and proposes managed realignment as a practical way in which society can rethink itself, addressing the new realities of the environment and a move towards developing a more sustainable relationship with it.

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This is a fine and tightly argued book about the transformation of the liminal edges of land and sea. The climate crisis will bring new challenges with rising seas, yet the east coast has long been a site for storm surge and raised sea walls, for deliberate breach and realignment. Such changes exemplify inner shifts too how we think about nature, how we might seek to influence or stand back. * Professor Jules Pretty OBE, author of This Luminous Coast (2011) and The East Country (2017) *

Author Bio

Stuart Oliver is a lecturer at St.Mary's University, London, UK.