A report released by Greenpeace Portugal is proposing a moratorium on new tourism projects in areas exposed to erosion or coastal flooding, along with the restoration of dunes, and the planned retreat of buildings and infrastructure in places where the advance of the sea can no longer be sustainably halted. The environment group is adamant that tougher enforcement of planning rules and a halt to construction in high-risk areas of the Algarve’s coast should be high up on the region’s list of priorities.
The proposals come as part of the report titled Destruição a Toda a Costa — Retrato de um litoral português em risco (Destruction Along the Entire Coast – A portrait of a Portuguese coastline at risk), presented on 23 July. It examines the combined effects of climate change, urban development, and tourism pressure, along with the degradation of coastal ecosystems.
Greenpeace argues that the response to erosion cannot continue to rely on repairing damage, such as artificially replenishing beaches. Instead, it wants a national policy that reduces new development in vulnerable areas and gives natural coastal processes room to operate.
“Portugal has long known about the risks threatening its coastline. We have scientific knowledge, legislation and planning instruments. We cannot continue waiting for a beach to disappear, a cliff to collapse, or infrastructure to be put at risk before we act,” says Toni Melajoki Roseiro, director of Greenpeace Portugal. “The challenge now is to turn what we know into coherent political decisions and a long-term strategy capable of protecting people, nature and a territory that belongs to everyone.”
Greenpeace says the Algarve is facing “a perfect storm of unsustainable development and climate change”.
The report divides the region’s coastline into areas with different vulnerabilities, from the Costa Vicentina, where beaches, dunes and cliffs are exposed to the Atlantic, to the Ria Formosa and the Guadiana estuary.
Between Lagos and Albufeira, beaches are frequently lined by limestone or rocky cliffs whose intermittent collapse can put beach users at risk. Further east, between Vilamoura, Quarteira and Garrão, the organisation highlights chronic sediment loss, shoreline retreat, dense urban development, and exposure to storms.
Buildings, roads, tourist facilities, and other infrastructure close to the sea restrict the space available for beaches and dunes to retreat and reorganise inland, the group reports.
In the Ria Formosa, Greenpeace says protection depends on treating barrier islands, dunes, salt marshes, channels, sandbanks, intertidal areas, and seagrass meadows as an interconnected system, with the Algarve’s varied coastal systems making a single solution inappropriate.
According to the report, citing data from the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA), more than 25% of mainland Portugal’s coastline is in retreat.
The problem is not uniform. Erosion affects low-lying sandy coasts, while elsewhere the principal danger comes from unstable and collapsing cliffs.
Greenpeace says vulnerability is intensified by development close to the shoreline. Buildings, roads, car parks, and tourist facilities increase the number of people and assets exposed to risk while preventing beaches from moving inland as sea levels rise.
“The Portuguese coast is trapped between the advance of the sea and the advance of construction,” the organisation says.
Greenpeace is calling for new tourism projects, whether planned or already being processed, to be suspended in areas identified as vulnerable to erosion or coastal flooding, as well as within Natura 2000 sites.
The proposed moratorium is not intended as a blanket ban on construction or tourism. Rather, it is aimed at preventing new construction projects in areas where risks are already known.
“Continuing to allow new development in areas already known to be vulnerable means creating today the problems the country will have to solve tomorrow, often at considerable public cost and with consequences that may become irreversible,” Greenpeace says.
It also wants planning applications in high-risk areas suspended until assessments take account of current conditions and climate projections. Land should not become developable simply because a coastal defence scheme has temporarily reduced the danger, the report argues.
It should be noted that Portugal already has Coastal Zone Programmes, municipal master plans, risk maps, and rules protecting beaches, dunes, cliffs, salt marshes, and estuaries. Greenpeace says the main weaknesses, however, are enforcement, coordination between authorities, and the recurring failure to keep planning instruments up to date.
“The problem is not a lack of rules. It is the distance between protection on paper and protection on the ground,” the report says.
The organisation wants Coastal Zone Programmes revised to incorporate climate risks and their rules incorporated into municipal plans. It also calls for coastal erosion and flooding maps to guide decisions on homes, hotels, roads, public facilities, and critical infrastructure.
Moreover, Greenpeace is demanding greater transparency around coastal planning permissions, including the publication of technical assessments, risk evaluations, and conditions imposed on developers.
The report also links environmental protection to the public character of the coastline, and access to beaches. Greenpeace wants barriers restricting public access removed and argues that concessions, developments, and commercial activities must not appropriate land belonging to the public domain – something that has been a hot topic in recent months.
The organisation acknowledges tourism’s economic importance, particularly in the Algarve, but says the sector must respect the limits of the territory and contribute to adaptation. “This is not about preventing all economic development or tourism activity along the coast. It is about ensuring that decisions made today do not increase tomorrow’s risks, and that the public interest and protection of the territory take precedence over short-term choices,” Greenpeace says.
Greenpeace proposes that each coastal municipality assess the risks in its territory and identify exposed communities, homes, economic activities and infrastructure, translating that information into local adaptation plans. Those plans should establish priorities, responsibilities, funding, and timetables. and ultimately be coordinated across neighbouring municipalities, since coastal systems and sediment transport do not stop at administrative boundaries.
Residents should participate in preparing measures, particularly where homes, infrastructure, or economic activities may need to be relocated. The report also recommends early-warning systems, and clearer public information about the region’s specific coastal risks.
The organisation proposes using part of tourism tax revenues to fund coastal protection and support for affected communities. It also supports taxes on the fossil fuel industry, arguing that sectors that have contributed most to the climate crisis should help finance adaptation.
The money should also support traditional coastal economies, including small-scale fishing and shellfish harvesting.
Greenpeace says adaptation must be guided by climate and social justice, with lower-income families and communities with less capacity to relocate protected from bearing a disproportionate share of the costs.
The report is accompanied by an interactive map covering about 350 locations across mainland Portugal, Madeira and the Azores.
Greenpeace describes it as a visual inventory rather than a technical database or national ranking of dangerous sites. Locations were selected because of climate-related impacts, including erosion, cliff retreat and flooding, or human pressures such as urbanisation, infrastructure, tourism and ecosystem degradation.
No risk score or ranking was assigned. The information was compiled from APA and Coastal Zone Programme data, vulnerability projections, technical documents, local organisations and media reports.
In the Algarve, the map includes locations from the Costa Vicentina to the Guadiana, including the Ria Formosa, Vilamoura, Quarteira, Albufeira, Carvoeiro, Lagos and Sagres.
The aim, Greenpeace says, is to show how erosion, flooding, property development, and ecosystem degradation take different forms along the coast and require locally tailored responses.
“The challenge now is to turn what we know into coherent political decisions and a long-term strategy capable of protecting people, nature, and a territory that belongs to everyone,” says Melajoki Roseiro.
The stretch between Vilamoura, Quarteira and Garrão is presented as one of the clearest Algarve examples of chronic sediment loss, shoreline retreat, urban development and exposure to storms.
The state has repeatedly used beach nourishment in the area. Greenpeace argues that this does not restore the underlying sediment balance and becomes a temporary measure when repeated applications are needed to maintain beach width.
The organisation also warns that groynes, sea walls, and other hard structures can alter sediment transport and transfer or worsen erosion on neighbouring stretches.
It therefore urges interventions to be considered across the entire coastal unit, with continuous monitoring, assessment of effects on nearby beaches and a clear timeframe for each defence.
Where conditions allow, hard defences, and artificial nourishment should be accompanied or replaced by nature-based measures such as dune restoration, native vegetation and allowing beaches room to evolve.
Where maintaining the shoreline is no longer environmentally, socially, or financially sustainable, Greenpeace proposes the planned relocation of exposed infrastructure rather than the indefinite repetition of temporary measures.
At Praia da Rocha, in Portimão, Greenpeace highlights the proximity of cliffs to established buildings and tourist infrastructure. Part of this development, it says, lies within the 100-metre safeguard zone and remains exposed to cliff instability.
The APA regularly carries out stabilisation works and controlled removal of unstable blocks, alongside exclusion zones and restrictions on new construction.
Such interventions can reduce immediate hazards but cannot stop the natural evolution of cliffs. Rockfalls occur intermittently and their precise timing cannot be predicted.
The risk increases when heavily used beaches are close to buildings, access routes, or facilities at the top or base of cliffs. Greenpeace therefore calls for monitoring, signage, enforcement, and restrictions on construction in the most exposed areas.
The report cites a 2018 study in Applied Geography which modelled the effects of sea-level rises of 0.5 metres and one metre on 32 cliff-backed beaches in southern Portugal. Under the one-metre scenario, 15 of 48 profiles with a beach berm would lose that feature entirely. Average beach-width reductions were estimated at 5.8 metres under a 0.5-metre rise and 9.6 metres under a one-metre rise.
“The good news is that we still have time to save Portugal’s beaches and, to do so, it is imperative to halt new development in vulnerable areas and invest in prevention and ecosystem restoration,” concludes Ana Farias Fonseca, Greenpeace Portugal’s campaigns and mobilisation coordinator.
Source: Greenpeace Portugal
Photo credit: Pedro Armestre/ Greenpeace
