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stakeholders at a local level. It is also very important that the decision-
making process benefits from the active, integrated and inclusive
participation of a broad spectrum of stakeholders, coastal institutions
and communities [SCH 13].
4.6.4.
The costs of adaptation
Even in cases where an adaptation strategy is developed and the
corresponding measures are applied with success, it is very likely that
it will be impossible to prevent entirely the negative impacts of
climate change on the coastal zones. This means that when calculating
the cost of climate change, the adaptation costs must be added to the
cost of the residual impacts, once the adaptation measures are
implemented. As far as the adaptation costs are concerned, they result
from the investment costs and the costs of implementing
the adaptation measures [FAN 10]. The economic efficiency of an
adaptation strategy depends upon a good distribution
between adaptation and residual costs that minimizes the global cost.
Adaptation to climate change supported by the private sector, that is to
say by families and businesses, is in general insufficient, especially in
the medium and long-term. Coastal zones adaptation usually requires
the intervention of the public sector and especially the cooperation
between the various stakeholders concerned, both public and private,
at the local, regional and national levels. Adaptation also involves
numerous institutions and organizations at different levels. Therefore
the adaptation initiatives taken by various institutions and
organizations should be coordinated and not contradictory, in order to
avoid unnecessary costs. This question is particularly important when
defining responsibilities on different spatial scales to coordinate
regional territorial policy decisions.
The projects FUND [ANT 10] and DIVA [HIN 09] are the main
sources of information regarding the estimated adaptation costs for
coastal zones at a global level. One of the most important conclusions
of these studies is that the costs of adapting the coasts (adaptation plus
residual costs) to GMSL rise during the 21st Century, on a global
scale, are much smaller than the costs of the impacts that would result
from the increase in the risk of flooding and erosion in the absence of
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