Coastline at the limit

The di­ag­no­sis

Apart from the tem­po­rary wounds in­flicted by storms like Glòria (Jan­u­ary 2020) or rises in sea lev­els that cycli­cally af­fect vul­ner­a­ble coastal areas such as the Ebre Delta, re­cent fig­ures show that beaches have re­gressed sig­nif­i­cantly in the coast’s more ur­banised areas. In Mont­gat, for ex­am­ple, the av­er­age beach re­gres­sion rate is 7.5 m per year, a fig­ure that reaches 9.8 m in Badalona.

The Mediter­ranean sea is ris­ing at a rate of 4 mm per year, says CADS, and in Es­tar­tit, for ex­am­ple, it has risen al­most 10 cen­time­tres over the past 30 years. Only 20% of the Cata­lan coast has enough space to ac­com­mo­date this re­treat in the face of ris­ing sea lev­els, which global pro­jec­tions in­di­cate could be as much as a metre by the end of the cen­tury. There is a lack of data on deltas, but they are also re­gress­ing due to ero­sion and sub­si­dence. The Ebre Delta coast is re­ced­ing more than 10 me­tres per year, and the Llo­bre­gat Delta has re­treated al­most a kilo­me­tre in the past cen­tury. The pic­ture is not rosy, but what makes the fig­ures even more alarm­ing is that 59% of the first 100 me­tres of the coast is ur­banised, with 120,000 new planned homes on hold while the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment con­ducts a re­view of un­sus­tain­able land.

On its list of crit­i­cal points, CADS warns about the sur­vival of coastal habi­tats: 70% of species and 50% of the coastal and ma­rine sys­tem habi­tats cat­a­logued by the EU-spon­sored Habi­tats Di­rec­tive are in a poor state of con­ser­va­tion, with only 17% in a favourable state.

The re­port stresses that the im­pact of cli­mate change on the coast will also have an ef­fect on coastal in­fra­struc­ture, whether trans­port (such as the R1 Ro­dalies rail­way line), en­ergy, san­i­ta­tion or com­mu­ni­ca­tions. Ports are also lo­cated in areas vul­ner­a­ble to cli­mate change. Storm Glòria, for ex­am­ple, caused dam­age with an es­ti­mated cost of more than 75 mil­lion euros in re­pairs to ports, beaches and prom­e­nades.

The so­lu­tions

There is no magic so­lu­tion and the study ar­gues that what is needed most is a com­plete re­think of how to make the coast more re­sis­tant. The re­port’s au­thors ap­plaud the pass­ing of Law 8/2020 on the pro­tec­tion and man­age­ment of the coast and the land re­view being car­ried out by the Cata­lan au­thor­i­ties. Yet they also point to other tools that they argue would aid the cli­matic adap­ta­tion of the Cata­lan coast. They talk about the cre­ation of a Coastal Con­ser­va­tory as an in­stru­ment to allow the ac­qui­si­tion and pro­tec­tion of coastal areas, and the pro­mo­tion of spe­cific plans to re­store and con­serve the coast or man­age its tourism. They also pro­pose a pro­gramme of ur­gent ac­tion to adapt the cur­rent in­fra­struc­ture to cli­mate change and plans for the trans­for­ma­tion of urban areas, which they argue should be re­nat­u­ralised.

Cur­rent reg­u­la­tion

While the state con­tin­ues to have the say over is­sues of gen­eral in­ter­est on the Cata­lan coast, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment ex­tended its own pow­ers with the pass­ing of the Coastal Pro­tec­tion and Man­age­ment Act in July 2020. Known as Law 8/2020, the new reg­u­la­tions re­quire ac­tiv­i­ties on the coast to be planned, aim to pre­serve and re­cover coastal areas, in­clud­ing their ecosys­tems and land­scapes, pre­vent and re­duce the ef­fects of cli­mate change, reg­u­late ac­cess to beaches and en­sure co­her­ence be­tween pub­lic and pri­vate ini­tia­tives.

Xavier Berga, head of Co­or­di­na­tion of Coastal, Rural En­vi­ron­ment and Moun­tain Ac­tions, stresses that it is a very am­bi­tious law that “has to be­come the road map for what must hap­pen on the Cata­lan coast in the com­ing years.” The hope is that local au­thor­i­ties will use gen­eral pa­ra­me­ters to man­age their own plans for the use of beaches and the coast: “Apart from the plans for the Maresme and the Ebre Delta, there is no co­her­ent plan­ning from the state and we want to fill this gap,” Berga says, who adds that the doc­u­ment is not bind­ing.

The law also pro­vides for the cre­ation of the Coastal Con­ser­va­tory. Berga ad­mits there are de­lays but says it is in­evitable. “We want the cre­ation and op­er­a­tion of this body to be very par­tic­i­pa­tory, both when choos­ing which prop­er­ties to ac­quire and when de­cid­ing who should man­age them,” he says. Move­ments like SOS Costa Brava have com­plained about the de­lays. “It’s not what we want,” says Sergi Nuss, who chairs the fed­er­a­tion of over 20 or­gan­i­sa­tions fight­ing to de­fend the Costa Brava’s land­scape and stop urban spec­u­la­tion. If the con­ser­va­tory were al­ready op­er­a­tional, then a pri­vate in­di­vid­ual’s pur­chase of the land of the for­mer US mil­i­tary base Loran in the Montgrí Nat­ural Park could have been pre­vented, Nuss says.

Land re­view

There is also the task of re­view­ing urban plan­ning in Cat­alo­nia, which in Jan­u­ary 2021 led to the ap­proval of the urban mas­ter plan (PDU) for the re­view of un­sus­tain­able coastal lands in Girona. Known as the Costa Brava Pro­tec­tion Plan, the re­view served to de­clas­sify land and pre­vent the con­struc­tion of 15,000 homes. Agustí Serra of the Gen­eral Di­rec­torate of Spa­tial Plan­ning and Ur­ban­ism talks about an un­prece­dented task that began in 2015, when it was de­cided to re­view the legacy of a very ex­pan­sive urban plan­ning model. First a re­view was car­ried out in the High Pyre­nees, pre­vent­ing the build­ing of 8,500 homes, and then came the Girona coast­line: “We’re not elim­i­nat­ing any build­ings. Al­though it’s a very ef­fi­cient and very am­bi­tious re­view, there are some lim­i­ta­tions, and what has been done is a task of fine surgery,” says Serra.

SOS Costa Brava cel­e­brates the ap­proval of the PDU, al­though they con­sider it in­suf­fi­cient, be­cause it still fore­sees the po­ten­tial build­ing of 30,000 homes. “Now is the time for local au­thor­i­ties to act, and the sooner they re­view their urban plans the bet­ter. We hope they will be brave and re­vise con­ser­v­a­tively,” says Nuss, who re­grets cases such as the one in Cadaqués, where the local coun­cil’s re­view of its urban plans to bring them into line with the PDU led them to keep plans to build up to 800 new homes, which Nuss says does noth­ing more than “dis­fig­ure the pearl of the Costa Brava”.

With the ex­cep­tion of the Barcelona coast­line, a sep­a­rate case, the same re­view of un­sus­tain­able land is un­der­way in the 41 coastal mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties. The ad­vance draft was ap­proved in Sep­tem­ber and the doc­u­ment is now being drawn up to re­view 335 spe­cific areas in 30 mu­nic­i­pal­i­ties where, under cur­rent plan­ning laws, 110,000 homes could be built. While wait­ing for the doc­u­ment to be pub­lished, build­ing li­cences have been sus­pended in 236 un­de­vel­oped areas that have al­ready been found to be un­sus­tain­able.

Raw ma­te­r­ial of tourism

To pre­serve the coast, huge amounts of sand are needed, known as the raw ma­te­r­ial of tourism. There are no beaches with­out sand, and reg­u­larly truck­ing it in is no long-term so­lu­tion. The CADS re­port says that be­tween 2002 and 2010, in an at­tempt to stop the ef­fects of coastal degra­da­tion of beaches, ap­prox­i­mately 775,000 m³ of sand per year were brought in, mostly to the beaches of Barcelona. De­spite the money spent, the prob­lem per­sists and the au­thors argue for a change in the man­age­ment of beaches to make them more re­silient with­out hav­ing to rely on these con­tri­bu­tions of extra sand. Xisco Roig is an ex­pert in the field. A doc­tor of ge­og­ra­phy and ge­ol­ogy, he is a se­nior voice in beach man­age­ment and es­pe­cially in the re­cov­ery and man­age­ment of dune sys­tems. “Beaches will never go away,” he says, adding that this does not mean that we can con­tinue doing what we have thus far - “which is noth­ing since the 1950s” - and con­tinue using them as just leisure areas.

“The beach is the most dy­namic and mo­bile sys­tem on the planet, even more than a river, which is a con­fined chan­nel. The prob­lem is that beaches have been des­ig­nated as a sum­mer ser­vice and not as a dy­namic all-year-round sys­tem,” ex­plains Roig, who is in charge of beach man­age­ment re­ports, ap­ply­ing sus­tain­abil­ity cri­te­ria, and, where pos­si­ble, dune re­cov­ery. “I pro­pose na­ture-based mea­sures with min­i­mal in­ter­ven­tion. Soft mea­sures that help nat­ural re­gen­er­a­tion,” he says.

The mea­sures he pro­poses take more time than ar­ti­fi­cial re­gen­er­a­tion, but are about re­vers­ing the in­ter­ven­tion­ist ac­tions that have bro­ken the nat­ural dy­nam­ics of the beach sys­tem over the years. “We’re treat­ing beaches like pub­lic squares, me­chan­i­cally clean­ing them, which is ab­surd and very harm­ful,” says Roig, who has worked in the Balearic Is­lands, the Caribbean, Va­len­cia and here in Cat­alo­nia. “My goal is to man­age beaches prop­erly and make them more re­silient,” he says.

There is plenty of work to be done by every­one. But there is also work to undo what has gone wrong in the past. The head of the Montgrí, Medes Is­lands and Baix Ter Nat­ural Park, Ramon Al­turo, is clear about the need for ac­tion to pre­serve the coast­line: “It is nec­es­sary to re­move cer­tain el­e­ments of human ac­tion, be­cause if noth­ing is done, in 15 or 20 years it will be flooded.”