BEACH-SOS Stakeholder Meeting in Warnemünde. Climate Resilience at the Beach: Understanding Challenges, Identifying Opportunities, Acting Together

24 April 2024

On April 12, 2024, EUCC – The Coastal Union Germany e.V. hosted the first Beach-SOS workshop “Climate Resilience at the Beach: Understanding Challenges, Identifying Opportunities, Acting Together”, involving stakeholder from the tourism industry, administration, and academia.

The workshop dove into the impacts of climate change on tourist beaches, using three distinct beach types as case studies. Participants identified the specific changes, the resulting problems, and whether these changes were perceived as positive or negative. The discussion further explored potential opportunities and adaptation strategies. Notably, the majority of participants already held a strong understanding of climate change’s effects and perceived the various changes, primarily with negativity. The workshop emphasized the importance of a coordinated adaptation strategy for beaches to effectively address these pressing challenges.

This workshop was the first in a series organized as part of the BEACH-SOS project in Germany. This project aims to make Baltic Sea beaches and tourism more resilient to climate change, directly addressing the concerns raised during the workshop.

The workshop itself was part of a larger action day called “StrandVision: Climate Adaptation and Plastic Reduction at the Baltic Sea Beach,” organized by the Leibniz Institute for Baltic Sea Research Warnemünde (IOW), the State Office for Environment, Nature Conservation and Geology (LUNG), and EUCC-D. The occasion was the visit of the Lithuanian environmental activist group “Save the Baltic Sea,” which has been circumnavigating the Baltic Sea on foot since the end of March to draw attention to the severe environmental problems of the inland sea.

Press release: https://www.io-warnemuende.de/mitteilung/items/wenn-das-ziel-mehr-ist-als-der-weg-aktionstag-strandvision-im-iow-zum-besuch-der-save-the-baltic-sea-expedition.html (german).

More about the event: https://eucc-d.de/news/workshop-zu-klimawandelauswirkungen.html (german)

More about the project: https://www.eucc-d.de/news/klimafreundliche-ostseestraende-und-tourismus.html

More information about the Initiative Save the Baltic Sea: https://savebaltic.eu/