Coastal Quest

Our Mission is to accelerate solutions, building resilient coastal communities for people, nature, and the climate.

Coastal Quest is committed to catalyzing positive change by placing communities at the forefront of climate resilience and adaptation efforts. By embracing the principles of community-driven solutions and public-private partnership, our organization aims to build a more sustainable and resilient future for coastal regions, where the strengths and voices of local communities are central to shaping and implementing effective solutions to the challenges posed by climate change and ensuring coastal ecosystems are sustained and provide the multiple benefits and value that communities care about.

Coasts are the frontline of the climate crisis - and the key to climate action. Nearly half of the world’s population lives within 100 kilometers of the coast, yet support for management, adaptation and recovery is complicated, underfunded, uneven, and unjust. Coastal regions are economic hubs, host science and research centers, and support high biodiversity and ecosystem services. And, more than 65 million people – 20% of the U.S. population – live in coastal cities, of which nearly 60% identify as black, indigenous and other people of color (BIPOC).

Communities in coastal areas face heightened risks from the impacts of climate change due to a convergence of multiple factors. As sea levels rise and extreme wet weather barrages otherwise drought-stricken regions, coastal communities experience economic hardship, health impacts, and widespread loss of property and human life.

In addition, coastal areas face diverse human-created threats and hazards including unsustainable resource use, carbon emissions, coastal development, pollution, and habitat loss. Combined with the threats of climate change, these compounding stressors pose significant risks to the resiliency of coastal ecosystems worldwide – jeopardizing many coastal communities’ way of life and contribution to potential conflicts, social instability, and migration away from the coast.

Furthermore, climate change disproportionately affects communities in need of climate justice (priority communities), exacerbating social and economic disparities. These communities often reside in vulnerable coastal areas with limited resources, facing heightened risks from extreme weather events, rising sea levels, and overall environmental degradation. Inadequate infrastructure, unequal access to and knowledge of basic public services, and limited economic opportunities further compound the challenges these communities face. Social, racial, and economic inequality and injustice has and will lead to human-created threats increasing the vulnerability of these already at-risk populations that often lack the adaptive capacity to plan for, withstand, and respond to climate impacts.

The cost of helping coastal communities protect their coastal ecosystems, reduce coastal threats and prepare for and recover from climate-related disasters is considerable, yet there is often a lack of political will and urgency to act. Without purposeful actions to reduce threats and strengthen resilience, coastal ecosystems will disappear, and communities may face financial burdens that could fundamentally alter their local economies. Despite these risks, there is limited human and financial resources currently available to support local-level planning and resilience project development. Some funds exist through state government, national government, private foundations, and multilateral organizations; however, many existing funds only support implementation of capital and infrastructure projects and are highly competitive.

In summary, there is a lack of support for coastal communities mitigating climate change manifests in insufficient funding, limited access to pertinent information, inadequate solutions, and the disproportionate impact on the most vulnerable communities. Addressing these systematic issues is crucial to building resilience and fostering sustainable development in the face of escalating climate challenges.

Global, US National, and key leading US states, like California, started in 2023 to allocate significant funding to support planning and implementation of multi-benefit coastal adaptation solutions. Coastal management is complex due to many different public and private property owners, convoluted and complicated governance structure, the need to coordinate across multiple scales and jurisdictions, the lack of political will and urgency to act, especially at the local level, historical lack of projects focused on the coast and silos built between ocean and land management leading to funding silos and limited capacity and know-how to move coastal solutions forward. The needs and opportunities we heard from surveying and interviewing over 200 government and community-based practitioners the past year include the following:

• Building political will and governance: Building support for coastal resilience solutions, as well as strong, effective governance will be critical in the next decade to ensure we increase resilience of vulnerable communities and reduce risk to climate change.

• Regional and local, community-based planning and implementation support: There is a need for dedicated resources for local governments and communities to undertake inclusive coastal planning and implementation processes – connecting land and sea and coasts and ocean. Regional inclusive, science-based planning approaches could build support for solutions tailored to the specific problems, needs, and strengths of each community.

• Capacity building and leadership development: There is a need to share approaches, best practices, technical tools and models across regions and communities and build capacity of practitioners, community-based organizations and leadership, especially in the most vulnerable communities on coastal resiliency.

• Financing and management: There needs to be support for local jurisdictions and communities to secure funding, ensure long-term funding, and management of those funds.

Coastal Quest will continuously learn and adapt our approach and programs to support our partners and create great impact. We will assess our impact and achievement of goals and outcomes as well as our own organizational sustainability. Measures of performance allow for continual assessment of progress and achievements towards the goals, and also provide a framework for any third-party evaluations that Coastal Quest may choose to undertake. Coastal Quest may also use these measures to guide real-time learning, reflection, and discussion of successes and challenges. Real-time learning, along with formal evaluations, will guide adaptive management of Coastal Quest and its projects. As an accelerator and incubator or new efforts, pilots, and models we will take risks, potentially fail fast, or if successful, scale solutions to expedite impact. We will assess our rate of success and identify key ingredients for success and share with the broader community.

To date we have measured the following indicators to track our impact.
• Dollars leveraged: ~$25 million
• Areas of protected and restored coastal habitat: ~6.9 million acres/ 11,000 square miles
• Number of communities supported: ~200

Healthy coasts support diverse and rich natural habitats that also provide great economic and cultural value. We envision a future in which coastal communities, resources, and ecosystems are sustainable, healthy, and accessible to all the people of the world. Yet the unique social and ecological issues faced on the coast are often overlooked in funding, planning, and policy. These issues are complex and dynamic, requiring an unprecedented investment in developing and implementing solutions. Furthermore, the ocean and freshwater sectors are siloed and the landscape of actors - including NGOs, agencies, and foundations – working globally and in the United States focusing on coastal issues is limited. The coast is also overlooked by traditional private funding sources and public investment does not match proportionally the population and environmental and economic value of coastal regions. However, there is great need and opportunity to access public funds, build capacity and solutions for the coast across all scales and issue areas while ensuring equity and serving priority communities.

Key coastal issue areas include:
• building resilient economies,
• public access,
• climate adaptation,
• natural infrastructure,
• resource conservation and management, and
• water quality.

Coastal Quest - as a non-profit organization with a single focus to work with coastal governments and communities to benefit people, nature, and the climate - is poised to fill this gap.

In a world where many people are passionate about protecting the environment, and new, innovative ideas for environmental protections and solutions are a dime a dozen, it is critical to align interests, work, and funding across industries and organizations. Across California, we see agencies like the California Ocean Protection Council, California Strategic Growth Council, and California Coastal Conservancy spearheading initiatives for equitable sea level rise and coastal adaptation. At the Federal level, FEMA recently selected priority areas, representing areas most in need of resilience planning and resources. The Biden Administration has led on equity and justice, including the Ocean Justice Plan, Justice 30, and America the Beautiful programs. Local, state, regional, and federal governments in many cases lack expertise, resources, or funding to accomplish what they desire or are mandated to do by legislation and are expected to deliver by their citizens in a timely manner. It is in these situations that connecting government to communities and the private sector and philanthropic organizations is critical. Coastal Quest considers these public-private partnerships an essential tool in realizing coastal resiliency projects in a time frame that is appropriate for mitigating coastal resource degradation and protecting coastal communities.

We are experienced in facilitating such public-private partnerships and have leveraged funding from some of the largest philanthropic organizations in the country with public agency dollars, working with them to align interests and create and implement sustainable environmental solutions. We believe that effective stakeholder engagement, collaboration, and partnership is the key to success for lasting positive change and to protect and enhance our coasts for people and nature. We are pleased to have lasting partnerships with the following organizations: California Ocean Protection Council, California State Coastal Conservancy, The Builders Initiative, Marisla Foundation, Edison International, Orange County Community Foundation, County of Santa Clara, University of California, and California Department of Parks and Recreation, among others.

To build coastal community resilience, Coastal Quest seeks to deepen and scale programs to fill these needs and gaps. We will build capacity, political will, and development projects as well as provide intermediary services to donors who wish to support state and local government organizations and community groups to plan for and implement coastal resiliency projects. Coastal Quest will serve as a re-grantor and could also provide organizational capacity support (e.g., market evaluation, partnership development, outreach strategies for building political will, monitoring and evaluation) and fiscal sponsorship to new projects and community organizations.

This three-year plan outlines how we will invest in our core mission and deepen and take our programs to scale. Increasing our general operating funds will also enable us to serve more fiscally sponsored projects, support grant-writing for ally organizations, and strategically plan and develop capacity building programs for CBOs and local governments to implement solutions on the ground. An investment in Coastal Quest at this stage in our growth is an investment in smart, equitable, and highly leveraged solutions for coastal resilience and adaptation. The past three years we exceeded our goals operationally and programmatically.
We piloted our programs in key geographies, and we see a need and opportunity to deepen the work and scale it to other key geographies. There is demand for our services and the opportunity is to become the go-to coastal organization globally and take our proven solutions to scale.

Orange County and other coastal areas.