Our Approach

Across the globe coastal communities and ecosystems are underrepresented, often crisscrossed with numerous governmental jurisdictions, agencies, and non-governmental organizations intersecting on the coast but not specifically working there. Simultaneously, the increasingly severe effects of climate change — higher temperatures, decreased water quality, extreme weather events, severe wildfires, sea level rise — are resulting in destructive, recurring, and widespread loss of human lives, habitat, and property. Unfortunately support for coastal adaptation and recovery is underfunded, uneven, and unjust. The coast – and the nearly 2.4 billion people who live there – are vulnerable.

How we work

We are problem solvers and coastal experts. We support communities in action and governments at work. We do this through providing project management, science and technical expertise, connecting partners with financial and human resources, contract management, grantmaking, and facilitating public-private partnerships. We are purposefully nimble, designed to solve multifaceted and complex coastal issues. We are here to achieve resilience goals, reduce threats, and implement solutions.

Where we work

Coastal Quest works around the world. We are the go-to coastal organization globally and the community foundation for the coast. We work from white water to blue water, on lakes and shorelines, and at the land-water connection.

Our Goals

We are committed to solving climate, coastal, and water problems. Our mission directly impacts the health of the coast and coastal communities. The scope of our work focuses on identifying, supporting, and implementing viable community-driven solutions. We want to protect and enhance the coastal communities and environments we love, and we achieve this through the following overarching goals:

Protecting and Enhancing Coastal Ecosystems

Coastal areas face a myriad of threats and hazards driven by human and climatic activity including impaired water quality, shoreline erosion, coastal development, flooding, pollution, and habitat loss. Globally, these threats pose significant risks to the resiliency of coastal ecosystems, including nearshore marine, coastal watersheds, intertidal and wetland habitats (e.g., wild dunes, kelp, mangrove, saltwater marsh, seagrass, coral reefs) and species. Coastal Quest helps mitigate these risks and enhance coastal resiliency with programs that improve and increase effective sustainable management, protection, and restoration.

Increase Coastal Resiliency for Vulnerable Communities and Economies

Coastal Quest focuses on working with vulnerable communities and economies, especially priority communities to build capacity and multi-benefit solutions as well as effective governance comprised of coastal resilience policies, management actions, and regulations in a direction towards sustainability. Our initiatives support bottom-up, pragmatic solutions to increase the well-being of coastal communities.

Our Strategies

Coastal Quest is solution-oriented, committed to promoting innovation, partnership, and the uptake of cutting-edge information and ideas to ensure vibrant and resilient coastal communities and ecosystems. We deploy our three key strategies to catalyze and uplift communities to implement durable solutions that are scalable and achieving multi-benefit outcomes.

Capacity-Building and Knowledge Sharing
Coastal Quest works with government, community-based organizations, and individuals to initiate self-defined coastal solutions that result in the increased use of decision-support tools, sharing of new approaches and models, conducting user-driven actionable research, identifying best practices, and providing the materials and training that best fit government and community needs and objectives. We support community organizations, especially priority communities with coastal resiliency support, leadership development, and capacity.
Build Support, Pilot, and Implement Solutions
Coastal Quest collaborates with partners to identify needs, opportunities, new tools, and approaches that will lead to actionable design and implementation of solutions. We build decision-maker and community support, strengthen legal frameworks and governance structures, increase climate adaption to support solutions, ensure effective project development and work planning, and conduct meaningful pilots.
Financing, Regranting and Fiscal Sponsorship
Coastal Quest facilitates strategic partnership development, identifying and leveraging public and private funding to implement solutions, contract and grant management. We administer programs and provide fiscal sponsorship.

Our Impact

To date we have measured the following indicators to track our impact from our projects in California, Mexico, the wider Caribbean, and the South Pacific:

Dollars Leveraged

~$15.5 million

Areas of Protected and Restored Coastal Habitat

~88,300 acres

Number of Communities Supported

~68