Protection of marine and coastal areas
In 2025, Surfrider Foundation Europe continued its commitment to the sustainable and balanced management of coastlines, combining legal and environmental victories with the development of educational resources and the generation of new knowledge. Faced with development projects threatening exceptional coastal ecosystems, the organisation maintained a firm and vigilant stance — convinced that coastal protection cannot tolerate environmental compromises or superficial solutions.
Blue carbon credits: Surfrider is conducting a study on stakeholders’ perceptions
Blue carbon credits — financial mechanisms designed to recognise the carbon-sequestration capacity of coastal and marine ecosystems — are attracting growing interest in Europe.
To better understand how this issue is perceived by its key stakeholders, Surfrider Foundation Europe conducted a qualitative study based on a series of interviews, with three distinct groups: environmental scientists and engineers, professionals in ‘blue finance’ and fundraising, and experts in law and public policy.
The first key finding: views are far from unanimous.
Whilst those in the blue finance and blue economy sectors are generally enthusiastic about these mechanisms, scientists and public sector practitioners on the ground express significant concerns.
Among the obstacles identified are high accreditation costs, complex methodologies, unresolved scientific uncertainties, and a real tension between the logic of long-term conservation and funders’ expectations of short-term profitability.
The study also raises a fundamental policy issue. Paradoxically, decision-makers’ growing interest in blue carbon credits coincides with a reduction in public funding for the organisations responsible for managing and protecting these ecosystems.
This mechanism therefore risks allowing certain actors to claim they are committed to environmental protection without actually reducing the pressure they place on the natural world.
More broadly, the study examines the risk of a gradual withdrawal of public authority in favour of market-driven approaches, and the implications this has for the protection of natural common goods.
Coastal Fresk: rolling out to the volunteer community
Conceived by Surfrider Foundation Europe and first held in 2025, the Coastal Fresk is a collaborative workshop inspired by the Climate Fresk.
Using a card game, a mural and hands-on materials, participants are invited to reconstruct how a coastline functions, identify the human impacts threatening it and collectively brainstorm adaptation solutions.
Fun, practical and accessible to all, this tool can be delivered in various formats — one-hour sessions, three-hour workshops or stand-based activities.
In 2025, Surfrider began rolling out this tool within its community by training its volunteers to facilitate it, notably in Loire-Atlantique, Seine-Maritime, Brittany, Lyon and Hérault.
These trained volunteers are now able to run the Coastal Mural independently, paving the way for a larger-scale rollout from 2026 onwards.
‘Coastline in Danger’: a role-playing game adapted to the Spanish context
For several years now, Surfrider Foundation Europe has been working to export and adapt its educational tools beyond France’s borders.
In 2025, the role-playing game *Littoral en danger* — designed in France in 2019 to provide a better understanding of the complexities of coastal management and the need for dialogue between all stakeholders — was translated and adapted to the Spanish context.
This adaptation process, which goes beyond simple translation to take account of specific local regulations and territorial characteristics, demonstrates Surfrider’s commitment to spreading its awareness-raising tools across Europe.
Urdaibai:
Victory against the expansion of the Guggenheim Museum
Nestled in the province of Bizkaia, in the Spanish Basque Country, the Urdaibai Biosphere Reserve is home to one of Europe’s richest estuaries: salt marshes, seagrass beds, oak forests and wetlands form a blue carbon ecosystem of exceptional ecological value, designated as a Natura 2000 site and listed under the Ramsar Convention. For several years, this natural heritage has been threatened by a project to extend the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, involving the construction of two buildings linked by a footbridge on stilts crossing the protected area.
Firmly committed to the preservation of coastal and marine ecosystems, Surfrider Foundation Europe joined the campaign led by the Guggenheim Urdaibai Stop group and the many environmental organisations — SEO/BirdLife, Greenpeace, WWF, Ecologistas en Acción — that had taken a stand against this project.
This collective campaign has borne fruit. On 16 December 2025, the board of directors of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao definitively abandoned the Urdaibai extension project. A major victory for civil society, for biodiversity, and for the protection of Europe’s coastal ecosystems.
Talmont-Saint-Hilaire Surf Park: legal proceedings initiated
In Talmont-Saint-Hilaire, in the Vendée region, plans are afoot for a large-scale surf park to be built on the site of the Vendée Aquarium, just 250 metres from the sea and right on the edge of a Natura 2000 site. Surfrider Foundation Europe strongly opposes this project, for which planning permission was quietly granted by the local council in September 2024, without any official announcement.
The environmental stakes are significant: a nature survey carried out in October 2025 revealed the presence of 16 protected bird species and 7 bat species, whose habitats would be directly threatened by the removal of hedges, the felling of trees, as well as the noise and light pollution from a facility capable of accommodating up to 250,000 visitors a year. The project also raises numerous unresolved questions regarding water resource management.
Alongside the local collective AC de Vagues — which gathered more than 25,000 petition signatures and mobilised over 750 people at a demonstration in November 2025 — Surfrider has taken the necessary steps to lodge an administrative appeal.
The legal proceedings were officially launched on 6 March 2026, with the filing of a petition with the Nantes Administrative Court.
Surfrider is calling for the outright abandonment of this project, which is incompatible with the objectives of coastal protection and biodiversity conservation.
Marine renewable energy: empowering the community to engage in the debate
As marine renewable energy projects proliferate across Europe and raise increasingly complex issues for marine ecosystems, Surfrider Foundation Europe continues to equip its community to enable them to play an active role in public debates on these issues.
Two toolkits have therefore been developed and distributed: one dedicated specifically to offshore wind power, the other covering marine renewable energy more broadly.
These resources aim to provide volunteers, citizens and local stakeholders with the necessary understanding to engage in consultations in an informed manner and help steer these projects towards better consideration of ocean-related issues.
