Meet Emma Rendle, an accomplished marine scientist and coastal resilience expert who joined us from Easter Island to Tahiti on our Round the World voyage. Emma has 20 years of experience advising governments, development banks, and organisations on the pressing challenges facing coastal communities.
As the founder of Resilient Coasts Ltd, her work extends globally, where she’s recognised for her advice on innovative approaches and solutions to coastal management. We were excited to explore the waves of impact Emma’s been making since we last crossed paths.
Tell us about yourself!
I’m the founder of Resilient Coasts, a multi-disciplinary consultancy offering bespoke coastal management advice. I have three degrees covering marine biology and oceanography, and I specialise in geomorphology. As a child, I was interested in saving the planet and vegetarianism. Over the years I moved interest towards ocean and ecosystem thinking – how we continue to shape our world at scale as custodians.
My journey has been like following breadcrumbs. I’ve worked with many different NGOs, universities, organisations and consultancies on various projects over the years. I’m an interdisciplinary marine scientist and work in lots of different fields – I’m ‘a jack of all trades’ when it comes to the marine sciences! I like to look at the different pieces of the puzzle and understand it enough to translate it for others to also understand how the system works, in pieces or as a whole puzzle.
Those puzzle pieces might be improving natural or implementing artificial defences for flooding, opening connections and flows for water or soils, or developing specific policy or legislation to support conservation or better management of a place – unpicking the complexity of issues and laying out clear strategy to improve upon a situation.
Photo Credit: Kristine Berg
What’s your superpower?
My superpower is being able to see all problems and synthesise them. Specifically, I love being able to understand the natural systems and find ways to translate them to someone, be it governments, councils or even private firms, so that they understand it better to design a more effective, holistic integrated solution with the bigger picture in mind.
There are often many components to man-made issues that can be improved with better connectivity in natural systems. These improvements allow nature to do what nature does best – provide us with nearly everything we need to function and survive!
Photo Credit: Rachel Lucas
Can you tell us more about Resilient Coasts Ltd?
We’re all about the marine and coastal space – and the communities and activities in those spaces. We are typically developing solutions and advising clients on how we can manipulate the environment or reduce the risk posed by the environment for the benefit of humans and nature.
For example, recently we’ve worked on a project locally in Plymouth where we were asked to consult on a planned pontoon construction. They wanted to know what the wave heights and the sea levels would be at the site, now and in the future, and how this would impact the structure so engineers could design the structure accordingly. They seem like simple questions but you’ve got to gather a lot of information about the situation (topographic, meteorological and oceanographic) before you can build a numerical model to understand offshore waves, then propagate those waves through a model over a complex shallow seabed before they reach the site of interest – it becomes very technical quickly, and that’s before we add the complexity of climate change induced sea level rise!
We help our clients understand a site in a level of detail required for their project design, at a conceptual scale through to detailed design. We take on an advisory role and help people – governments and businesses – think through a problem and create reports to give insight to the systems involved, helping them to understand the marine space better and create resilience. This can be anything from waste water systems to decisions at the shoreline (a cable coming onshore or the world’s largest deltas) to the management of the sea space itself (marine plastics, marine protected areas or blue economy) and in most cases a large emphasis on engagement and decision-making with coastal communities.
Essentially, our work is research based, understanding systems and presenting solutions or recommendations for projects to councils and local communities.
Photo Credit: Bonita Baker-Robins
Can you give us an example of the sort of projects you work on?
The projects I work on are all climate change-related issues such as disaster risk reduction (mostly flooding) and/or adaptation to sea level rise and erosion-subsidence issues. I focus on how those places will be impacted and what they could do to mitigate it or adapt and how we can engineer with nature. In projects involving mangrove forests, seagrass beds or coral reefs for example, I examine how to better connect systems to improve water flow or flushing and alleviate the blockages and bottlenecks that cause flooding.
Flood and erosion related projects mostly address the issue of loss of land and therefore increased risk to homes and infrastructure i.e. the sea is seemingly moving inland, flood happens more frequently and along with salinity issues for inland soils and water bodies. So, what can we do to stop people’s homes being washed away? How can we move people out of harm’s way? The answers are often practical. You are often limited by space and confined by local policy or rules. However, many solutions are politically complex and incredibly difficult to float directly with the local government or communities. We can either physically move people out of harm’s way, or do so with engineering by figuring out how to either enhance natural systems (beaches, dunes and habitats) or apply grey infrastructure – more often a combination of both is required.
Image Description: Emma during a site visit in the Caribbean.
In these scenarios, I work with councils/governments to figure out how to logistically transition and adapt community thinking and behaviour to the reality of climate change. Addressing the change with the communities, as well as communicating the science and the reasons behind it, helps with these steps towards adapting both coastal defences and human activities.
“People are starting to recognise that these considerations and changes are needed, and the environment can’t just be tagged on as an afterthought.”
Do you sense a change in how people and businesses are receiving advice?
In some projects I’ve worked on, you can see the value of your contribution. People are starting to recognise that these considerations and changes are needed, and the environment can’t just be tagged on as an afterthought. The environmental system has to be improved and the environment made more resilient, only then can you input the infrastructure. I refer to the resilience in nature as the “building blocks for development”.
“…utilising systems that are already in nature and enhancing or restoring their capacity protects the environment, which in turn protects us.”
Image Description: Emma during a site visit in the Caribbean.
In other words, utilising systems that are already in nature and enhancing or restoring their capacity protects the environment, which in turn protects us. Finding the harmony between solutions and re-establishing these natural systems is crucial for long-term development; and that’s where our consultancy (Resilient Coasts Ltd) works best.
When did your passion for the ocean begin?
I grew up in Gloucestershire, but my grandmother lived in Devon where there are lots of beaches. I grew up watching the water moving in rockpools, making huge sandcastles and witnessing the rapid erosion of cliffs, land falling away into the sea with the waves – it fascinated me. As a child, watching the world, you absorb everything, and those memories stuck with me.
Image Description: Emma in Koh Kong, Cambodia during a mangrove forest project.
My interest in marine biology however, began when I started diving and surfing. When I was 18, I went to the Red Sea with school and I took my advanced PADI out there. After school, I travelled and worked in dive tourism and charities and was always around water; whether surfing, diving, kayaking or sailing!
Why did you join an eXXpedition voyage?
The reason I wanted to join was to essentially alleviate my eco-anxiety, which for me was horrendous. I just wanted to have an opportunity to relieve that anxiety, live a simpler life and do something good, something practical and conservation-oriented.
Photo Credit: Meraki Fade
One thing that was bugging me was the astonishing amount of plastic that was in the environment. It was everywhere; in cities, beaches, all over the reefs. All my travels and work internationally, it is a key indicator of poor waste management practices, and highly indicative of wider environmental issues.
There was a lot of noise being made about ‘marine plastics’ in European countries, but it didn’t feel like the same noise was being made elsewhere, often where the problems were far greater. I knew from working in the industry that waste was not being properly managed, and the problem wasn’t necessarily being directly addressed. Personally, it was getting increasingly hard to hear the problem being essentially ‘brushed under the carpet’ and I wanted to do more proactively. I also wanted to learn more about the issues and challenges within the subject and share back my understanding and experience. So, when the opportunity to join eXXpedition popped up in my social media feed, I applied for it enthusiastically!
What surprised you most during the voyage?
That we didn’t find a lot of plastic in the South Pacific gyre, but closer to the coastlines of islands – there was more than I had expected. It did resonate with my observations from work in India and South East Asia. That was personally impactful because there is such vastness and distances to travel across the Pacific and yet it was still washing up on remote islands. For example, on Rapa Nui, there was more plastic on the beaches than I could have imagined, especially given its offshore location and given the lack of plastic that the community uses. But that’s the point isn’t it? It’s the places in the middle of nowhere that are carrying the burden and being impacted the most. The islands ‘capture’ it because they’re almost sitting in a funnel due to oceanic processes – the sea is continuously flowing the plastic around and towards islands and dumped onto their beaches. Most plastics have been carried from distant places and nations, and we can only imagine how much plastic has sunk into the deep ocean.
“There is value in showing the impact of our decisions and behaviour in remote places because it can help us make more impactful changes inland where the problem originates.”
Photo Credit: Emily Penn
How did your experience impact your life?
Personally, it was a confidence boost, even just from the perspective of raising the funds to join the trip! It gave me a challenge – a goal after a redundancy. That helped provide a demonstration of what I could achieve for eXXpedition, and therefore myself in a move away from employment. The experience helped me understand myself and people better, in how we communicate about the environment – whether that’s through social media, storytelling or the impact of word of mouth.
There is now so much more noise about these issues on land, and the way eXXpedition focuses on the source and behaviour change is important. There is value in showing the impact of our decisions and behaviour in remote places because it can help us make more impactful changes inland where the problem originates.
What keeps you hopeful about the future?
There is always hope, even in the back of my eco-anxiety. I know that things will change for the better, and the mindset is shifting. You can even see in the way things are being globally financed, and that there’s a fundamental shift in awareness and attitude. People genuinely want to do more and do better.
It will take a lot more people like me working in these spaces but we’re certainly on the way. You have to play the game to some extent to be able to make the change from the inside. Individually, people want to do better and are leaning on governments to do more, and there are more people working towards a better future now.
If you could give one message to the world, what would it be?
If we had that as a common goal, it would be to put biodiversity-loss higher on the agenda. We put a lot of focus on other issues, such as climate change and marine plastics, but they are interconnected. We need to work to relieve the pressure on biodiversity to be less vulnerable to environmental threats and hazards. And, if we continue to lose biodiversity quicker than we are changing, then we are never going to keep up with the risks posed by climate change. We are only resilient to climate change if we hold a deep and unwavering respect for our natural systems and how they serve us.
Image Description: Emma in Koh Kong, Cambodia during a mangrove forest project.
There’s a big shift happening towards people – collating coastal communities and peoples efforts, actions and stories – and there is always hopefulness in that messaging. People are changing and searching for alternative or traditional approaches. Eyes and ears are open to old/new management techniques, less pressured or sustainable practices, and want to fund large initiatives to support our natural systems and processes.
There is hope that we are going in the right direction and we’re moving back towards nature and recognising that we are the custodians of our planet. Next we need to agree to global protection legislation and effective governance for our oceans and coastal spaces. The question always remains, will it be soon enough and/or go far enough in law for real international commitment?
