Securing the Future of Lagoons

The environmental, social, governance and economic case for urgent action

An unfolding crisis

• Lagoons provide an array of fundamental, valuable resources that are essential to the wellbeing of coastal communities in many parts of the world.
• Particularly in West Africa and elsewhere in the global South, the settlements built around them are among the fastest-growing and most developed areas.
• Yet the sustainability of lagoons and the survival of the people who rely on them are under increasing pressure from a complex set of interconnected problems.
• These include population growth, pollution, poor sanitation and climate-change-related threats such as sea-level rise, erosion and shifts in natural cycles.
• Understanding of these challenges remains limited, as a result of which there is little effective policy and governance to support prospective solutions.

An innovative platform for action

• The Resilient Lagoon Communities Network (RLCN) seeks to provide an international, multi-stakeholder platform for tackling this issue.
• At the RLCN’s core is an interdisciplinary team of academics with decades of combined experience in a wide range of relevant fields.
• One of our key goals is to facilitate dialogue and knowledge transfer between experts from the natural and social sciences, engineering and education.
• Crucially, we also believe the sustainability of the world’s lagoons requires people – that is, local communities – to work with policymakers and practitioners.
• By promoting an approach that is both “bottom-up” and “top-down”, we aim to forge the links needed to build long-term resilience in lagoon communities.