Beach wrack use: a challenge to be addressed

Abstract

Beach wrack, consisting of all sort of material washed ashore, is a natural phenomenon occurring on beaches all over the world. Nevertheless, irrespective of being a natural component of beach ecosystems, it has become a specific social problem for local authorities e.g. relating to touristic amenity of the beaches. On the other hand, the material offers the chance to become a valuable resource again.
However, a lot of obstacles and conflicts of interest have to be overcome before sustainable use of beach wrack can be implemented in the beach management schemes of Baltic tourist resorts. The problems to be solved range from nature protection aspects via seasonality and composition of material washed ashore to legal regulation issues – all together resulting in a complex mixture of problems which local authorities hardly can deal with alone. An EU-funded project is tackling these problems in a concerted approach recently, in the presentation an overview about the challenges addressed as well as the strategy followed by the CONTRA-project will be given as a teaser for the forthcoming workshop.