In 2020, our Coastal Defenders, the volunteers and experts fighting at the local level against major pollution and coastal developments, won several important fights. Among these, one historic success was the victory over resort owner, Donald Trump’s, plan to build a wall along his beachfront golf course in western Ireland.
Surfrider’s Coastal Defenders program: an activist network to protect coastlines
In addition to awareness raising, education, advocacy and of course expertise, Surfrider has always encouraged European citizens to take concrete action against the degradation of the ocean and coasts. Citizen mobilization represents one of the most important levers of action for Surfrider Europe and, in addition to the organization of waste-collections, citizen participation really shows in campaigns to fight against harmful projects and pollution. This is made possible through the Coastal Defenders program, created in 1992.
The principle is that anyone who is aware of a coastal threat can request Surfrider’s support in order to obtain logistical, legal, scientific or media assistance, and hence oppose the project or pollution in question as efficiently as possible. By public involvement and appeals, the Coastal Defenders play a role in increasing the general public’s participation in protecting the oceans. The results, which are both concrete and visible for the inhabitants directly concerned by the project or pollution, are a reminder that such actions are capable of shifting the lines and that efforts must be continued.
82 victories since 1992, the latest against the former President of the United States!
While environmentally harmful projects and pollution continue to flourish all over Europe, the Coastal Defenders have managed to put an end to 82 of them! Among the most recent victories, it is worth recalling the one notched up in 2019, after ten years, against the Alteo de la Gardanne factory, north of Marseille. By managing to overturn the legal exemption which allowed the aluminum giant to dump tons of polluting “red mud” into the Mediterranean Sea, the Coastal Defenders largely contributed on that occasion to improving water quality and thus the health of water users.
Another example, in 2020, was when citizen pressure from the Coastal Defenders led to stop the project to build a surfpark on seven hectares, in the city of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, only a few kilometers away from the best French surf spots.
What appears as one of the most emblematic victories occurred last March, when the project in Doughmore orchestrated by the former President of the United States was brought to a halt. 2020 will definitely not go down as a good year for Trump: in addition to losing the US presidential elections and a good number of his political supporters, he also suffered a big defeat as a businessman. Seeking to protect at all costs the golf course of his hotel, located along a beach in the west of Ireland and threatened by the erosion of the dunes, he had planned to build two walls several meters in length along the coastline. After more than four years of fighting to save Doughmore’s ecosystem and natural landscape, the Coastal Defenders represented by Friends of the Irish Environment, our volunteer and staff experts, and the Save The Waves coalition, have finally won their case with the Irish Town Planning Appeal Commission. This is a considerable victory giving hope for the fights to come.
A promising victory for the rest of the Coastal Defender campaigns.
This victory constitutes a real hope for all our other ongoing battles. Whether it is a question of fighting against the creation of a test island and a fishing corridor in Knokke-Heist in Belgium, speeding up the excavation of the former landfill in Dollemard in France, or avoiding the extension of the port of Porto in Portugal, we are full of hope for the coming year and trust that more decisive victories will be won for the protection of our coasts and oceans.
