Shoreline management planning can it benefit Ghana? A case study of UK SMPs and their potential relevance in Ghana

This paper assesses the potential for the adaptation of UK Shoreline Management Planning to address Ghana’s problems of coastal erosion and resultant shoreline retreat in an environmentally acceptable and sustainable way. Management strategies, past and existing, have largely focussed upon provision of hard protection at specific locations where risk levels to life and economic assets are high. There has been little commitment to the concepts of integration of management interventions with wider natural processes and longer-term sustainability. In most cases, such ‘ad hoc’ management interventions classically tend to stabilise the shoreline at the protected section and aggravate the situation elsewhere along the shoreline (“knock-on effects”). Such problems have occurred previously on many other developed coastlines leading in recent decades to more holistic and potentially sustainable shoreline management methods (Hooke, 1999). For example, UK shoreline management planning since the mid 1990s has achieved success in reducing the occurrence of “knock on effects.” It has altered thinking away from the basic provision of defences towards a more holistic management of risks at the coast, setting out clearly locations where protection is likely to be required and others where alternative options are more sustainable. This paper reviews the progress achieved in the UK and assesses the extent to which the methods devised could be adapted towards the requirements of Ghana’s shoreline. It concludes that many of the concepts and methods should be transferable provided that a sound understanding is developed of the physical coastal processes based on application of littoral celland sediment budget methodology.