Interdisciplinary approach to assessing multi-risk environments on the UK coasts: how do we sustainably manage eroding and flooding coasts in the vicinity of legacy landfill sites and communities?

Managing the impacts of legacy waste from historic coastal landfills, contaminated land and artificial (made) ground is a pressing issue, given the prevalence of sites, their proximity to settlements or environmentally sensitive areas, and risks associated with accelerating climate change (such as sea level rise and increased erosion). At the coast, these issues also fall between two largely separated policy areas – waste management on the one hand, and flood and coastal risk management on the other – which further complicates the development of solutions.

While existing research on historic coastal landfills has focussed on understanding environmental impacts, a holistic assessment in a UK context, compiling challenges across different dimensions, is yet to be explored. This paper presents initial findings from a major new UK research project – Resilience of Anthropogenic Coasts and Communities (RACC) – that is investigating these issues from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Drawing upon existing literature and expert knowledge, this presentation provides an interdisciplinary overview of the current challenges to managing coastal waste sites in the UK. It divides these challenges into environmental, political, legal and economic, and social and cultural dimensions, and identifies knowledge or policy gaps associated with each challenge.

Initial analysis reveals that multiple challenges interact to compound policy solutions in this context, underlining the complexity of addressing legacy waste in a changing climate as a ‘wicked problem’ that requires interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary solutions. Findings will be relevant to academics, policymakers and practitioners working in this context both in the UK and internationally.