Negril is among Jamaica’s most popular tourist destinations. Its many high-end hotels together receive about 20% of all the nation’s tourists. For decades, Negril has maintained the image of a laid-back and natural beach resort (Figure 1). However, it is estimated that up to a meter of its beautiful coastline has disappeared annually since the 1990s. In 2012, the opportunity arose for Jamaica’s government to tackle the coastal erosion problem. Almost 10 million dollars became available through a climate change adaptation fund, to be spent on coastal infrastructure. The funding would be spent on a submerged breakwater that would shield the coastline against incoming wave energy@en

Before handing over to key experts and end-users with their reflections on the NatureCoast program and the pilot Sand Motor, allow us to reflect on our own experience, from the perspective of post-doctoral researchers with the task of integrating, applying and disseminating the research done by twelve PhD researchers. We will do so in four steps, guided by the four pictures on the left page.@en

The Sand Motor has attracted attention from inside the Netherlands and from far outside. As described on Page 138, hundreds of international delegations have visited the Sand Motor since 2011, to learn more about its workings and to see it for themselves. In addition, several organizations and policy actors have approached the NatureCoast research team with specific questions about their own local coastal erosion problems. The four cases that will be described in the following pages, from Bacton (United Kingdom), Scania (Sweden), Negril (Jamaica) and Lima (Peru), could not be more different from each other. Not only is the morphology different, but the political climate, main economic activities and the actual importance of sandy beaches differs in each case. However, representatives from each of these locations contacted us about their eroding sandy beaches, to learn from our experiences, and to see if a solution like the Sand Motor, with the same underlying principles, would work in their case. In the following pages, we will describe the key challenge for each case, characterize the physical conditions and the local governance system, and look into possible ways forward. But first, we will highlight some overall observations and lessons learnt.@en

Climate change is the most formidable challenge that our ever-increasing world population faces, and it poses special problems for those living near coasts. People have always been attracted to the coast, as a place to live and work, and to relax. By 2050, around half of the world’s population is expected to live near the coast, the vast majority in developing countries. How will we cope with rapidly rising sea levels and more intense and frequent storm surges?@en

A unique natural landscape. A beach to strengthen the dunes. A great place to walk the dog. The Sand Motor is all of those and more (Figure 1). It provides different benefits to people, and people perceive those benefits differently as well. Collectively, we refer to the contributions that the environment provides to people as “ecosystem services”. Ecosystem services are the link between nature and society, between ecosystems and our wellbeing. For instance, dune ecosystems are beautiful to hike in, but also protect millions of people against rising sea levels, while at the same time filtering and storing large amounts of drinking water. A change in the condition of dunes would therefore result in considerable changes to human wellbeing.@en

To actually design for sandy solutions, designers need to know the key factors that drive ecosystem services. This section will look at the key factors that drive the three main ecosystem services of coastal defense, recreation and nature development, followed by a description of how to evaluate these. Finally, an example of arguable the most important design factor is discussed.@en

The behavior of the Sand Motor has been monitored extensively in an interdisciplinary way, feeding into NatureCoast’s integrated numerical models. Applying these models enables us to forecast the future changes of such sandy solutions. This section demonstrates the impact of three design parameters on the predicted evolution over a period of 20 years.@en