RDE545 Valuing the Mental Health Costs of Coastal Erosion

There is a business need to develop guidance for understanding and addressing wider social impacts of coastal change. Coastal erosion poses current and future risks to England and Wales and will likely be exacerbated by climate change2. The national coastal erosion risk map (NCERM)3 (EA, 2018-2021) shows us that approximately 740 properties in England are vulnerable to coastal erosion over the next 20 years. A further 2,000 may become vulnerable over the next 50 years4.

While work is ongoing to address the feasibility of physical interventions to mitigate

the risk of coastal change, there is little available data and guidance for appraising the wider social consequences, in particular mental health impacts, of coastal erosion risk5.

This project seeks to address this gap and produce guidance for valuing the mental health costs of coastal change in England and Wales. Previous work has been undertaken to establish and monetise the mental health costs of flooding6, which developed methods for evaluating the mental health impact(s) of flooding. Coastal erosion data for this project was scarce, therefore the current methods do not provide a comprehensive estimate.