With the onset of global climate change impacts upon coasts, vulnerability to erosion has become a major subject of research worldwide. Portugal is no exception and the drives for erosion are well known: (a) sea level rise; (b) cut-off of the sediment nourishing to the littoral drift; (c) anthropogenic degradation of natural coastal defenses; and (d) hard engineering protection structures [8]. Vulnerability and potential responses have also been assessed at a pan-European scale by European projects [10] and throughout the years by Portuguese researchers [30]. Climate change impact on coastal areas was extensively assessed by current project members in what was, to our knowledge, the first ever attempt to use a scenario-based approach to these issues [2, 20, 21]. Nevertheless, all the evidence dealing with the effects of climate change on coastal areas in Portugal derives exclusively from the natural sciences. The only contribution from the social sciences is the incorporation of socio-economic projections, such as expected growth of population and GDP measures, into the frameworks used by natural scientists. Internationally, social scientists have played a much greater role in coastal zone impacts assessment following the guidelines developed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) [18]. But even here there is a consensus that too much attention has been given to physical impacts at the expense of examining social vulnerability, as well as community-based interpretations of coastal erosion risk and adaptation to changing coasts [7].</p><p>Such limitations are even more critical when dealing with a subject like coastal erosion for which the general global scope normally used in modeling processes is unsatisfactory. The coast is a special spot where the global and the local clash. The very same properties of the problem demand a glocal focus [29] with the capacity to project over decades. This requires efforts directed not only to reduce global green house gas emissions: it also demands a careful look at local adaptation issues to increase the current limited social capacity to deal with rising sea levels [17, 13]. The coarse spatial and temporal scales of physical models make most assessments blind to local social factors operating at the level of coastal communities. This constitutes a major flaw in current international literature that this project aims to repair. Only the social sciences may provide a scale downsizing able to grasp local and regional phenomena. This kind of information would be much more valuable to inform policy decisions than large scale studieswith scarce practical application [1]. Also, the common use of &quot;risk society&quot; theory [4] to such threats revealed limitations on the understanding of local communities' role in building specific risk concepts [6] and their adaptation potential [22]. Therefore, this project is distinguished by an integrative approach previously developed by our research group members [12]. When looking at risk concepts and practices, we assume the coexistence of different rational ways to deal with threats. We consider the interplay between different social actors, namely how risks are managed by policy-makers, assessed by scientists, portrayed by the media and perceived and disputed by the public [11]. It is important to take into consideration that the interactions between climate change and the coast are characterized by high levels of uncertainty, which leads locally to an undervaluation of the problem and to its perception as a psychologically, temporally and spatially distant risk [16]. It is thus predictable that any adaptation policy willing to increase its legitimacy by inclusive and participated procedures with intense involvement of local populations in the design of a sustainable coast will face strong oppositions[14]. The focus groups, exhibitions and workshops present in our methodology, will be designed having in mind both the opportunities and dangers present in participatory processes already identified in the literature [5, 19]. The lack of social knowledge on climate change related issues shouldn't be blamed on an experience of limited cooperation between natural and social scientists. We can advance three reasons for why mainstream sociology has been largely oblivious concerning climate change: the marginalization of environmental sociology from prominent sociology journals and training programs; the difficulty of sociologists in assessing future social behavior; the foundational suspicion of naturalistic explanations for social facts inherited from the writings of Durkheim [9, 15]. To overcome such limitations, this proposal, in contrast, builds on the challenge of thinking together with natural scientists in a true interdisciplinary project (see methodology). More, the research group at ICS has been the major source of social knowledge in Portugal on environmental issues. Our scholarship on environmental practices and representations of the Portuguese population will be a major asset when dealing with climate change and coastal erosion [27]. And although there is a gap in the social sciences research in Portugal involving climate change, we are responsible for the only survey of the Portuguese population on climate change [24]. We have been dealing with sustainable development themes for a long time, taking into special consideration its local dimensions. We have already identified how processes of Agenda 21 Local may assume a crucial role in mobilizing populations for more active forms of citizenship practices [25]. Also, in dealing with environmental education projects in Portugal, we pinpointed the overwhelming role of local power in such actions as well as the generalized neglect of coastal themes [26]. For many years we have been taking the environment as a key variable for understanding Portuguese social change [23, 28].