Managed Retreat of a Mangrove Coast

In recent years on European coasts, shore embankments built in earlier times to enclose intertidal areas for reclamation and agricultural use have been abandoned or deliberately breached as part of a policy known as ‘managed retreat’, whereby land is allowed to revert to intertidal conditions, with revival of salt marshes, mudflats and their associated ecosystems. The abandonment of some polder land at Sungai Lurus in western Johor, Malaysia, in 1971, when a new defence system was emplaced behind the failing outer bund, can be considered a form of ‘managed retreat’ although the abandonment of agricultural land to mangroves was not intentional but forced by erosion. A reassessment may have to be made of the economic viability of marginal polder land on which expensive infrastructural development and a costly maintenance programmes have to be employed to sustain production. Alternative uses of such areas are now being explored, especially in the light of widespread coastal erosion and the costly shore protection program in Peninsular Malaysia. The advent of possible induced sea level rise in Malaysia may see more and more polders being subjected to ‘managed retreat’ in the coming years and possibly reverting to mangroves, which are, themselves, an important sustainable resource, besides providing habitats and nursery grounds for fish. The Sungai Lurus experience on the nature of mangrove recolonization after abandonment will help towards a more effective management of coastal retreat in future

Abandonment (legal · Archaeology · Coastal erosion · Environmental planning · Environmental protection · Environmental resource management · Fishery · Geography · Intertidal zone · Land reclamation · Mangrove · Marsh · Salt marsh · Shore · Water resource management · Wetland · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Coastal and Marine Management · Environmental Science · Ecology · Geology · Oceanography