Coastal hazards such as erosion, flooding and pollution are a major problem in many coastal areas. Managing and improving on these issues is hampered by multiple factors including the lack of reliable data and information, insufficient communication structures between stakeholders and, generally, missing pathways to reach informed decisions that have a sustained impact. The Ghanaian coast with its history of erosion and flooding will be used in this project to develop a robust and participatory Nature-based Solution (NbS) using mangroves to address a variety of hazards such as climate change, flooding, coastal erosion and pollution, but also covering aspects of blue carbon, ocean acidification and biodiversity loss with the ultimate aim of increasing community resilience and wealth creation. MANCOGA will develop a decision support system building on existing structures and incorporating state-of-the-art technology. The project co-design phase will ensure broad and comprehensive involvement of stakeholders from all levels of society and administration. MANCOGA will analyze existing data, identify gaps, establish mechanisms to fill those gaps. This data will be fed into a Digital Twin to provide What/If scenarios in support of new products and on demand models for assessing and predicting the role of mangroves as NbS for flooding and erosion at the Ghanaian coast. The applicability and dissemination of results will be facilitated by a digital toolbox for the easy use of archived and new observational data for knowledge-based decision-making, including (technically) simple and intuitive interactive tools for data summary, visualization, and presentation. An integral part of this project will be the continued involvement of stakeholders in the process using and fostering the relationshipsdeveloped during the co-design phase. A major outcome will be a list of mitigation options and policy reforms.
MANCOGA’s integration into the UN Ocean Decade program CoastPredict will enssure the alignment of its goals and objectives with those of the Ocean Decade. It is also integrated with other research and outreach efforts such as the Coastal Ocean Environment Summer School in Ghana.

Capacity development in MANCOGA will build on inclusivity and create an environment that will foster equality and equity, including a broad variety of societal groups, including active involvement of students, early career researchers as well as technical and administrative support staff in academia.

In addition, we expect this project to lay the groundwork for sustained future collaboration, knowledge transfer and capacity building.