Join the CRC for Productive Coasts and Industries

Pathway to impact

The CRC for PCI will adopt industry focus issues and research themes. Industry focus areas will specify a subset of challenges that are compromising productivity in coastal areas and industries, and opportunities to support industry competitiveness through alleviating these issues.

Focus 1, Coastal protection

• Resolving the vulnerability of critical built infrastructure, specifically ports and water and wastewater utilities, to inform decisions for protection and investment into works (e.g. building coastal defence structures).


• Transitioning coastal defence from ‘grey’ (hard infrastructure) to ‘green’ (natural) and hybrid approaches.

Focus 2, Resource productivity and provenance

• Developing robust and acceptable stock enhancement approaches for commercial and recreational fisheries species.


• Diversifying aquaculture production and markets.


• Developing Indigenous land and sea agribusiness opportunities.


• Ensuring seafood provenance and protecting its market value.

Focus 3, Waste impacts and remediation

• Achieving offset objectives for development and carbon emissions reductions through development of restoration, blue carbon and co-benefit approaches to coastal habitat repair.


• Supporting a low carbon future through development of blue carbon approaches.


• Resolving ‘real time’ cumulative impacts in a multi-use and changing environment.


• Reducing and treating waste from wastewater treatment facilities, ports and aquaculture.

To direct research and development, and to ensure the CRC can successfully deliver solutions than can be used cost-effectively by industry case study sites will be adopted during the term of the CRC. These sites will provide a focal point for a large portion of the research and development, enabling concentrated effort to be applied to common as well as unique challenges such as environmental factors, demographic influences and requirements for industry operations.

In recognition of the multiple economic, social and ecological drivers that challenge industry activity cross-cutting research themes that can deliver outputs across these dimensions will be maintained. These themes will build connections between industry sectors and industry and government, increase capacity for industry-led approaches in reaching consensus, and grow the competitiveness of all sectors without productivity for one sector being at the expense of another. These themes will generate an explicit focus on the development of policy and regulation as well as market approaches to support economic growth (e.g. new market opportunities for export commodities) and the social licence of industry.

• Theme 1, Making Decisions.


• Theme 2, Delivering Solutions.


• Theme 3, Building Value.

By openly tackling challenging issues and contested space, for areas, resources and values, the CRC will work to build relationships and grow consensus within the partnership and beyond the CRC. If we work together to address industry barriers created by our shared use of coastal areas and resources, we will:

• reduce unnecessary regulatory burden and competition and alleviate costly conflicts, which constrain rather than enable industry activity and


• community values;


• unlock investment, financing and opportunity in coastal industries that might otherwise be limited because of uncertainty;


• collectively increase the social licence to operate for coastal industries and assets;


• realise genuine benefit for all users and communities through direct opportunities and the extraordinary collective economic value generated by trade reliant on the coastal margin; and


• guarantee the health and integrity of our environment is secured, restored and enhanced into the future.