Coastal adaptation is more than responding to environmental change. It is ensuring a connection to the coast through the choices we make as individuals, communities, and ocean users. Having healthy coasts into the future depend on people who understand their value, respect their limits, and act to protect them – through everyday decisions, volunteering, advocacy, or supporting organisations that care for coastal environments. By getting involved, people can help safeguard coastal ecosystems, support local knowledge, and ensure coasts remain places of cultural, ecological, and community wellbeing.
Coastal community societies and networks
Community organisations play a pivotal role in the supporting the coastal zone— some for decades—through their capacity to mobilize local resources, knowledge, and networks. Here is a non-exhaustive list:
The Australasian Coastal Restoration Network is a platform to connect those specialists, experts, researchers, practitioners and managers so that they can collaborate, share knowledge and ideas, and seeks answers and solutions to challenges.
Members include marine and coastal restoration professionals, from academia, local and state government, commonwealth organisations, NGOs, consultancy, and industry.
Dedicated to healthy coastal ecosystems, vibrant coastal communities and sustainable use of coastal resources. Members are a national network of coastal stakeholders (professionals, practitioners, coastal and/or First Nations communities) committed to coastal protection and ongoing stewardship.
ACS believes that a healthy and sustainable coastal environment is important for the majority of Australians. The ACS believes a well-informed independent voice is essential to provide advice on coastal matters to governments and coastal managers.
The Australasian Mangrove and Saltmarsh Network is an informal independent network for people and organisations concerned about mangrove and saltmarsh tidal wetland habitats around Australia and Australasia generally.
Network members include professional researchers, managers, industry officers and environmental consultants, as well as community enthusiasts.
A national, independent charity dedicated solely to protecting our precious ocean wildlife – a community of ocean lovers across the nation working for healthy seas. It is staffed by a committed group of scientists, educators and passionate advocates who have defended Australia’s oceans since 1965.
AMCS works on the big issues that risk our ocean wildlife. They have protected critical ocean ecosystems with marine reserves around the nation, including Ningaloo and the Great Barrier Reef. They have led the movement to ban whaling, stopped supertrawlers, and protected threatened and endangered species like the Australian Sea Lion. Together, our community of ocean lovers save our oceans every day.
Mission: to support a community volunteer network of groups and individuals made up of Australians who care passionately about the protection and management of our coastal and marine environments. This is through: empowering individuals and communities; sustainable management of natural and productive landscapes; building resilient ecosystems and communities.
Mission: to protect and restore fish habitat and support recreational fishers in these actions.
OzFish is Australia’s only fish habitat charity – dedicated to empowering and supporting recreational fishers and their communities to improve their local waterways. They operate across the country and through our network of members and volunteers, organised into local Chapters. OzFish has delivered hundreds of impactful habitat restoration projects which benefit fish. By restoring habitat, they are improving the ecosystem of Australia’s waterways and providing healthy environments for native fish species to not only survive but thrive. This helps to ensure that, for years to come, Aussies will continue to enjoy their favourite fishing spots. They believe the most complex and seemingly impossible challenges can be solved when people come together and get to work. We were founded by anglers, waterway stewards and ocean lovers who saw that the waterways in Australia we loved were being degraded, and not much was being done about it.
Mission: to empower ocean action, developing long-term initiatives that benefit the sea and the people who rely on it for survival. Their work focuses on three main areas: 1. Developing solutions to marine debris and pollution; 2. Restoring coastal and estuarine ecosystems. 3. Supporting sustainable fisheries.
Mission: To build the capacity of marine managers to effectively manage, protect, and restore coral reefs and reef fisheries around the world. To achieve this, RRN connects reef managers and practitioners with peers, experts, and the latest science and strategies, and provide online and hands-on training and implementation support. The Network is a partnership led by The Nature Conservancy.
Mission: to support connection, collaboration and engagement of stakeholders to improve the health and sustainability of Western Australia’s coastal and marine environments.
WACMN is a network of diverse stakeholders with a passion for the WA coastal and marine environments, who interact to learn together and from each other. In WA, valuable coastal and marine conservation and management work is already undertaken by individuals, community groups, private organisations, research organisations and government agencies.
