| dc.description.abstract | The 2012 Coastal Master Plan is the first iteration of the on-going coastal master planning process the state of Louisiana is implementing in an effort to reduce and/or prevent the loss of valuable wetlands along the state’s southern coast. Residents of the region face increasing flood risks from the Gulf of Mexico due to the loss of surge reduction capacity of the eroded wetlands and from rising sea-levels due to climate change. The 2012 plan represents the first time Louisiana has linked coastal restoration with flood prevention, but many uncertainties regarding implementation of the plan remain. There is not a systemic understanding of the implementation process from the literature. Instead, multiple strategies for environmental policy implementation under uncertainty have been developed. The Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority (CPRA), the state agency developing and implementing the plan, has selected adaptive management as its implementation strategy for managing uncertainty, a strategy with a troubled history of transitioning from theory to practice.
This dissertation investigates areas of uncertainty with the 2012 Coastal Master Plan as well as framework fidelity to the selected management strategy of adaptive management. A research triangulation approach was used, with a review of the environmental history of coastal erosion in Louisiana, document analysis of local newspapers, and interviews with stakeholders involved with the master planning process being the sources of data. The main findings are that fundamental issues exist around the state’s implementation of adaptive management thus far and that scientific and financial uncertainties are tightly linked. Adaptive management is poorly understood by stakeholders and mostly absent from local public discourse despite being critical for successful implantation of the master plan. Scientific uncertainty is leading to an entrenched conflict regarding the impacts of a major plan component, controlled sediment diversions. Given the framework fidelity issues found, it is unlikely that CPRA will see the expected learning and reduction in scientific uncertainty promised by adaptive management. Scientific and financial uncertainties were also found to be tightly linked in Louisiana, with the state possessing very limited funding for plan and uncertain avenues to secure further restoration funds. Louisiana cannot be perceived as wasting or misusing these resources, and scientific uncertainty in relation to projects within the master plan results in a catch-22 scenario where the state can only mitigate scientific uncertainty if financial uncertainty has already reduced, which is not possible until scientific uncertainty is mitigated, a situation not accounted for in the environmental policy implementation strategies, including adaptive management. | en_US |
