Region Occitanie’s PLAN LITTORAL 21 towards a coastal Observatory

The coast of the Occitanie region is an asset of great tourist-environmental importance as well as a strategic element of development of the territory, but erosion now affects 25% of the beaches and is expected to continue or even increase in the coming years in the context of climate change.

This observation is at the origin of one of the commitments of the PLAN LITTORAL 21  put in place in 2017 by the Region, the French National Government  and the Deposit Fund: for a showcase French of ecological resilience – towards the spatial recomposition of coastal areas.

The Region intends to focus on co-construction of coastal development and management projects with local authorities in order to facilitate the operational implementation of the SRADDET(Regional Scheme of Management, Sustainable Development and Land Equity).

To implement this approach, the Occitanie region, accompanied by AURCA (the host structure of the OBServatoire  CATalane)and OPEN IG is leading the creation of local observatories at the sedimentary unit level and administering a regional observatory. This partnership tool should allow:

• Support and homogenize coastal monitoring using defined methods and vulnerability characterization indicators
• Accompanying the decision-making process of the owners by feeding  reflections
• Expand coastal resilience actions to spatial recomposition on a SCOT(Schema de coherence territorial) scale.

The Region as a reference structure will connect the skills and communities involved, but also between local observers on the regional perimeter and the upper stairs. It will also begin to exchange experiences with neighboring regions to make the process reproducible.

By coordinating the actions of coastal managers, the management of coastal plan 21 allows to pool resources, optimisation of financing and preparation of short, medium and long-term strategic directions.