While coasts are often places of unsurpassing beauty, many coastal communities suffer from poverty, unemployment, health risks, and the effects of environmental degradation. Coasts Under Stress is a unique interdisciplinary exploration of the complex interplay of economy, culture, environment, and health in the coastal communities of eastern and western Canada.

Rosemary Ommer and her project team combine formal scientific (natural and social) and humanist analysis with an examination of the lived experience of coastal people. They analyze community erosion created by economic decline and the ecosystem damage caused by unrelenting industrial pressure on natural resources and look at the history of coastal communities, their resource bases, their economies, and the way the lives of people are embedded in their environments.

Coasts Under Stress shows that many coastal people are determined to survive in the places they love and stresses the need for investment to encourage the recovery of coastal communities.