Oceans and coasts provide important ecosystem, livelihood, and cultural values to humans and the planet but face current and future compounding threats from anthropogenic activities associated with expanding pop-ulations and their use of and reliance on these environments. To respond to and mitigate these threats, there is a need to first systematically understand and categorise them. This paper reviewed 226 articles from the period 2010-2020 on threats to Australia's oceans and coasts, resulting in the identification of a total of 307 threats. Threats were grouped into three broad categories - threats from use and extraction; environmental and human -induced threats; and policy and socio-political threats -then ranked by frequency. The most common 'threats from use and extraction' were recreational activities, non-point source pollution, and urban development; the most common 'environmental and human-induced threat' was increased temperatures; and the most common 'policy and socio-political threat' was policy gaps and failures (e.g., a lack of coastal climate adaptation policies). The identification of threats across all three categories increased over time; however, the identification of 'threats from use and extraction' increased most rapidly over the last four years (2017-2020). Threats were most often described for their impacts on environmental values (68%), followed by economic (14%), socio-cultural (12%), and Indigenous (6%) values. Only 45 of the 226 papers (20%) discussed multiple threats. The threats facing Australia's oceans and coasts are rising, cumulative, and multi-faceted, and the inherent tensions between varied uses, along with intensification of uses that derive short-term anthropogenic benefit, will continue to degrade the ecological sustainability of ocean and coastal systems if actions are not taken.
Laubenstein, T; Smith, TF; Hobday, AJ; Pecl, GT; Evans, K; Fulton, EA; O'Donnell, T
Threats to Australia's oceans and coasts: A systematic review
Ocean & Coastal Management