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Sustainable Coastal and Estuary Management—2nd Edition

A Special Issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050) belonging to the section "Sustainable Oceans".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 28 February 2027 | Viewed by 1292

Editor


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Guest Editor
School of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Cardiff University, Cardiff, UK
Interests: coastal policy and management; estuary management; coastal risk management; marine spatial planning at the land–sea interface
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues, 

This second volume on sustainable coastal and estuary management continues to address some of the most urgent challenges facing these vital environments. Despite decades of management efforts, coasts and estuaries remain under growing pressure from human activities. Predictions and evidence of climate change suggest that these diverse, multifunctional, and highly biodiverse systems face increasing risks that are complex, overlapping, and accelerating. Estuaries are especially vulnerable, valued both as ecological hotspots and as centers of human development, making them sites of intense and often conflicting demands. This Special Issue aims to advance global understanding of coastal and estuary sustainability. We welcome contributions that explore governance and management strategies to strengthen resilience and adaptability, as well as studies that investigate the impacts of complex human–environment interactions in these settings.

Submissions may include original research articles, reviews, and critical case studies with wider relevance and application. 

Areas of interest include, but are not limited to:

  • Development and application of frameworks to support sustainable coastal and estuary management;
  • Governance approaches that reflect the complexity and interconnections of coastal and estuary systems, including links with marine spatial planning and catchment management;
  • Social dimensions of sustainability, including well-being, stewardship, and meaningful community engagement;
  • The implications, opportunities, and challenges of blue growth for coastal and estuary environments.

By drawing together diverse perspectives and approaches, this volume seeks to inform more effective and adaptive pathways toward the long-term sustainability of coasts and estuaries worldwide.

We look forward to receiving your valuable contributions.

Dr. Rhoda Ballinger
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • coastal management
  • estuary management
  • governance
  • sustainability
  • socioecological systems
  • community engagement
  • blue energy transition

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

25 pages, 550 KB  
Article
From Flow to Gate: Integrating Knowledge in Collaborative Governance of Cross-Border Estuaries—Comparative Insights from the Schelderaad and the Forum Tideelbe
by Eva Schick
Sustainability 2025, 17(23), 10605; https://doi.org/10.3390/su172310605 - 26 Nov 2025
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 891
Abstract
Estuary governance exemplifies the challenge of decision-making under incomplete knowledge, thereby turning knowledge integration into a central practice of governance. Varying across cross-border governance settings, the forms of this integration try to respond to the persistent challenges of governing complex socio-environmental systems characterized [...] Read more.
Estuary governance exemplifies the challenge of decision-making under incomplete knowledge, thereby turning knowledge integration into a central practice of governance. Varying across cross-border governance settings, the forms of this integration try to respond to the persistent challenges of governing complex socio-environmental systems characterized by uncertainties and contested stakeholder landscapes. Tracing the pathway ‘from flow to gate’, this paper examines how knowledge integration unfolds within collaborative estuary governance, using a comparative case study of the Schelderaad (Scheldt estuary) and the Forum Tideelbe (Elbe estuary) as illustrative governance regimes. Empirical data were collected through document analysis, media sources, and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders from both examples. This study employs a novel three-phase conceptual lens to systematically assess contextual preconditions, integration processes, and resulting effects of knowledge integration in these settings. The findings highlight that effective knowledge integration depends not solely on technical expertise and institutional arrangements, but also on social dynamics, ultimately shaping the legitimacy and learning capacity of collaborative estuary governance. In this way, the comparative analysis highlights the relevance of context sensitivity, institutional anchoring, and the fundamentally social nature of knowledge integration, which can either foster shared understanding and cross-border learning or reinforce disagreement, mistrust, and conflict. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Coastal and Estuary Management—2nd Edition)
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