Empowering communities to protect Ireland's coastlines

Ireland's dunes are among our most important natural defences against climate change. They protect communities from coastal flooding and erosion, provide valuable habitats for biodiversity, store carbon and form an integral part of many of our most cherished landscapes. Yet despite their importance, dune systems across Ireland are facing increasing pressure from climate change, rising sea levels, storms, recreational use and habitat degradation. 

Dune Action was developed to help address this challenge. Supported by the SSE Airtricity Green Fund and delivered through a partnership including ACT, CAROs, Clean Coasts, Education for Sustainability, Leave No Trace, University College Dublin and the University of Galway, the project is building a nationwide network of informed and empowered communities capable of protecting and restoring Ireland's dune systems through nature-based solutions. 

Rather than relying solely on costly and carbon-intensive hard engineered responses to coastal erosion, Dune Action promotes community stewardship, citizen science and ecosystem-based adaptation as practical tools for climate resilience. 

Building on the Pilot

The original Dune Action pilot demonstrated that communities wanted to play a greater role in protecting their local coastlines. It proved that with the right knowledge, tools and support, local people could make meaningful contributions to understanding and restoring dune systems. The current programme builds directly on that success.

Rather than simply expanding the initial pilot to more locations, Dune Action has evolved the original concept into an all island methodology for community-led climate adaptation. Alongside training delivered across twelve coastal communities, the project, through its dedicated coastal geomorphologist Dr. Kevin Lynch, has developed the 3S Framework (Sand, Species and Space) into a consistent monitoring methodology that enables communities to understand their dune system's sand supply, biodiversity levels and to identify the key pressures affecting it.

Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Adaptation

For generations, coastal erosion has often been addressed by trying to hold the shoreline in place through hard engineering such as seawalls, rock armour and concrete revetments. While these structures can provide localised protection, they frequently interrupt the natural movement of sand, disconnect beaches from their dunes and create new challenges elsewhere along the coastline. Over time, this can lead to increasingly expensive cycles of maintenance while reducing the ability of natural coastal systems to adapt to rising sea levels and more frequent storms.

Dune Action promotes a different approach. Rather than asking "How can we stop coastal change?", the project asks "How can we work with natural coastal processes to build resilience?"

Healthy dune systems are among Ireland's most effective natural coastal defences. Unlike fixed hard engineered structures, dunes are dynamic. They absorb wave energy, release sand during storms and naturally rebuild afterwards, allowing coastlines to adapt rather than simply resist change. At the same time they provide internationally important habitats, store carbon, improve water quality and support recreation, tourism and local economies.

By restoring dunes and allowing natural processes to function, nature-based solutions can deliver multiple benefits simultaneously protecting communities from coastal flooding and erosion while enhancing biodiversity, strengthening ecosystem health and creating more resilient coastlines for future generations.

Why Nature-Based Solutions Matter

Dunes are often viewed simply as piles of sand behind a beach. In reality they are living infrastructure. When healthy, dunes continually respond to wind, waves and storms by redistributing sand throughout the coastal system. This natural movement allows coastlines to absorb extreme weather, recover after storms and continue protecting inland communities without the need for continual hard engineering interventions.

Where these natural processes are interrupted by hard coastal defences, dunes become disconnected from their sediment supply. Beaches can narrow, habitats are lost and coastlines become increasingly dependent on hard engineered protection—a process often described as coastal squeeze.

Dune Action helps communities understand these natural processes and demonstrates that, in many situations, restoring and protecting dunes represents a more sustainable long-term adaptation strategy than continually reinforcing hard infrastructure.

Building a National Network of Coastal Stewardship

The programme is being delivered across twelve coastal locations including Tyrella, Spanish Point, Banna, North Bull Island, Portballintrae, Castlerock, Tramore, Curracloe, Seapoint, Bettystown, Brittas Bay and Inchydoney. Each location has its own environmental and community context. Some are protected habitats, while others form part of Special Protection Areas, UNESCO Biospheres or locally significant coastal landscapes. Despite these differences, they share a common challenge: protecting and enhancing fragile dune ecosystems in the face of increasing environmental pressures.

Through Dune Action and its dedicated resource website (www.dunes.ie), local authorities, community groups, environmental organisations and volunteers are building shared understanding, exchanging knowledge and developing practical approaches to dune stewardship. The programme fosters collaboration across sectors, creating new opportunities for climate adaptation and coastal resilience.

Learning Through Action

At the heart of Dune Action is a practical and and accessible learning programme designed to connect people directly with the landscapes they are seeking to protect. The programme combines classroom learning, field-based training, monitoring activities and hands-on restoration work. Participants explore how dunes function, why they matter and what actions can be taken to improve their resilience and ecological health. The wider programme includes:

Dune Classroom Training Days, Community Planting Days, Dune Monitoring Demonstration Days and Train the Trainer Workshops. Together, these activities provide communities with both the knowledge and practical skills needed to become long-term stewards of their local dune systems.

3S Traffic Light Assessment

A significant innovation introduced through Dune Action is the 3S Traffic Light Assessment. For each workshop, participants work together to assess the condition of their local dune system across Sand, Species and Space, producing an easy-to-understand Green, Amber or Red assessment for each category. The traffic light system provides an accessible baseline that helps communities: understand the current condition of their dunes, identify the most significant pressures, prioritise local action, monitor change over time, create a shared evidence base for discussion between communities, researchers and local authorities.

Importantly, these assessments are not ecological, geomorphological or engineering surveys. Instead, they provide a consistent Level 1 baseline that captures local observations and supports awareness, stewardship and future monitoring. As demonstrated through the project's emerging 3S Kickstarter Reports, this methodology creates a repeatable national framework capable of producing comparable assessments across Ireland's coastal dune systems.

Citizen Science and Community Knowledge

A key ambition of Dune Action is to make coastal monitoring more accessible and participatory. The project recognises that local observations, lived experience and place-based knowledge can complement technical data and deepen understanding of how dune systems are changing over time. By involving communities directly in observation and monitoring, Dune Action helps bridge the gap between scientific research and local action. Communities are not simply beneficiaries of climate adaptation measures; they can also play an active role in generating evidence, identifying pressures and supporting the long-term stewardship of their local coastline.

Map Your Dunes

To support this work beyond the workshops, the dunes.ie knowledge hub hosts Map Your Dunes, an online citizen science platform led by Dr José P. Gómez Barrón of University College Dublin. Building on his CartoSpot platform, the tool has been adapted to integrate Dune Action’s 3S Framework — Sand, Species and Space. It enables communities to record site observations, map pressures and monitor changes in dune condition, contributing to a growing and more consistent national evidence base. By bringing local knowledge and geospatial data together, Map Your Dunes helps turn community observations into practical insights that can inform future management, restoration and climate adaptation.

Community Stewardship in Practice

One of the most powerful aspects of the programme is its focus on stewardship. Rather than viewing dune management as the responsibility of a single organisation or authority, Dune Action promotes a shared model of care where local communities, environmental organisations, researchers and public bodies work together to protect coastal landscapes. 

Stories and lessons emerging from individual locations are shared across the wider network, allowing communities to learn from one another and build confidence through shared experience. This creates a growing national community of practice around dune restoration and climate adaptation. The result is not simply a training programme, but a movement towards more informed, engaged and resilient coastal communities. 

From Local Action to National Impact

While Dune Action is delivered locally, its ambition is all island. The project seeks to position Ireland as a leader in community-led coastal adaptation by demonstrating how nature-based solutions, citizen science and local stewardship can contribute to climate resilience at scale. As climate pressures continue to increase, communities will play an increasingly important role in adapting to environmental change. Dune Action provides a practical model for how knowledge, participation and local action can help build resilience while strengthening connections between people and place. The programme demonstrates that protecting our coastlines is not simply an environmental challenge. It is also a community challenge, one that requires collaboration, learning and shared responsibility.

Working With Nature, Not Against It

Climate change means our coastlines will continue to evolve. The question is not whether our shores will change, but how we choose to respond. Dune Action demonstrates that resilient coastlines are created not by continually building higher walls, but by restoring the natural systems that have protected our communities for centuries. By combining community stewardship, citizen science and practical restoration through the 3S Framework, the project provides a scalable model for delivering nature-based climate adaptation across Ireland.

This is more than a community engagement programme. It is a shift in how we think about coastal resilience, moving from defending against nature to working with it.