Climate Change

Shelving the Coast

Natural Enterprise and Island 2000 had a particular interest in combining the themes of environment, community and arts in exciting collaborative projects. ‘Shelving the Coast’ was just such a one. Using its experience in climate policy and practice (having written the Climate Change Adaptation Report for the Island), Natural Enterprise came up with an experimental project to test a ground-breaking and innovative idea.

At the time, Ian Boyd explained, ‘Coastal squeeze is a real issue for maritime wildlife trapped between rising sea levels and hard sea defences -there is just nowhere to go…but UP! And that is just what the project aims to investigate – whether it is possible to create artificial shelves at critical heights in the tidal regime, to catch the right sediment and create stable ecological communities that can only exist given a particular pattern of inundation and exposure?’

Natural Enterprise was awarded funding by APE UK (Artists Planet Earth) to carry out the ‘Shelving the Coast’ project, one of 300 projects and awareness-raising initiatives around the world that aimed to combat climate change and develop local resilience and solutions to climate injustice. The project worked with award-winning environmental artists Eccleston George who had already successfully trialled artificial stonework under marine conditions. The Coastal Shelves themselves were designed to incorporate interpretive cues and stories and the decoration and shape of the outer structure grew from workshops with local schools. The project team worked with local schools from the outset so that curriculum links could be established with teachers at an early stage and visits to the site planned and programmed into the term timetable.

Work on designs and prototypes took place over the winter 2012/13 and  the first set of shelves were fitted at a location along the Solent coast of the Island in March 2013. so that they were in place in time for maritime wildlife’s peak spawning time in spring.

Ian Boyd continued, “We will be monitoring carefully throughout the rest of 2013 to understand how the shelves respond to the tidal forces and how the wildlife around them chooses to colonize and the designs will be tweaked and refined and new locations prepared to roll out Shelving the Coast in 2014 on a grander scale. Of course this all depends on whether the project works! But whatever the results, it will be a fascinating adventure into the realm of artificial marine habitats from which we can only learn more!”

We were supported by Artists Project Earth.