[eng] The effects caused by climate change on coastal systems, especially in terms of sea level rise
and associated extreme events, are a major concern for coastal management and society. When
implementing management strategies, a lack of information can lead to the alteration of natural
systems with an important role in coastal protection, leading to the need for new mitigation,
monitoring and/or adaptation projects. However, reaching solutions agreed by the entire
community can be challenging. Cala Millor (Balearic Islands, Spain) is an example of a
transformed coastal ecosystem where land development has led to the modification of a dune
system and consequent erosion of a beach system, leaving buildings exposed to storm events
and coastal flooding. This risk affects not only the environment, but also the entire settled
population, including two municipalities, hotels, schools and associations for the elderly, among
others. Adaptation climate change plans of urban beaches should be elaborated considering all
public administrations and taking into account society needs and requirements, in order to
minimize the risks associated with sea level rise and coastal flooding. To this end, this Master
Thesis proposes a multilevel governance perspective with a two-way communication and
participatory approach. On one hand, the creation and involvement of the Working Group using
the Think-Reason-Understand-Share-Test (TRUST) method aims to apply a practical and
hands-on approach, to obtain and use information to influence change. On the other hand, the
'communication, listening and involvement' method is selected for engaging society, being
active and respectful, useful and adding value. In this work, the early steps of involving the
public administration representatives and society perception are presented establishing three
specific objectives: i) to develop a protocol to lay the foundations for the creation of a
participatory mechanism of public administrations for the design of climate change adaptation
plan; ii) to analyze the perceptions, attitudes and opinions of policy makers at local, island and
regional level, regarding the effects of climate change on coastal ecosystems and ecosystem
services at Cala Millor; iii) to analyze the perception of changes in coastal ecosystems and
knowledge of climate change among society of Cala Millor, focusing, in this work, on scholars
that will be potentially affected by the adaptation plan. The methodology used for the creation
of the participatory mechanism for public administration was the development of documents
and the collaboration with governmental entities for the review, as well as the
Interest-Influence relation analysis of the potential members. For the study of the public
administration’s perception of the effects of climate change in Cala Millor and scholars group’s
perception and knowledge analysis, a survey method was implemented for the data collection
and the analysis was carried out by means of the software R v.4.1.4. Results present all needed
documentation produced for settling the participation mechanism. Regarding the analysis of
the surveys, the main results show that sociodemographic data and the relationship of the
representatives of the public administrations with Cala Millor can influence the perception of
the effects of climate change in the study area and also their behaviours and attitudes. On the
other hand, most scholars do not seem to perceive the effects of climate change at Cala Millor
regarding ecosystems and do not know what ‘climate change’ concept is. Also, significant
differences between their knowledge regarding the age and their parents' position have been
found. Future designed awareness campaigns should include basic knowledge and emphasize
on the differences between climate change and sustainability.