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A Associação Dunas Livres é um movimento de cidadãs que se une para proteger uma das últimas costas ainda preservadas do litoral ibérico: a “Costa Azul” entre Tróia e Sines.
This coastal dune strip has survived the unregulated urbanisation that has been spreading across the Portuguese coastline, and today it stands as a unique European treasure whose value for future generations will only continue to grow.
Precisely because it has maintained this good state of conservation and natural richness, its preservation is now threatened by the development of a “luxury tourism fabric”, already being promoted in the foreign press as “Europe’s new Ibiza” and the next global golf destination.
A dramatic transformation of the region is imminent — geographically, demographically, and ecologically. Six mega-developments have been identified, each larger than the local towns, along with five new golf courses and four resorts built directly on dune ecosystems, with numerous aggravating impacts, among others not yet publicly disclosed.
The failure to safeguard this territory has been attributed to deficient, outdated, and mutable land-use plans. The relevant Portuguese authorities appear to continue ignoring the absolute necessity of avoiding construction on dune systems—especially during the United Nations Decade on Ecosystem Restoration.
The dunes and wetlands present here constitute an extremely rich biodiversity hotspot, a sensitive home to many plant species protected at the European level under the Natura 2000 Habitats Directive, and an emblematic stopping point for birdlife. They mediate the transition between land and sea, influencing the integrity of nearby important marine ecosystems. They protect the Sado Estuary Natural Reserve. They provide countless essential ecosystem services to the Portuguese population, increasingly vital for climate change mitigation: controlling coastal erosion and sea-level rise; serving as key rainwater infiltration areas and replenishing the Sado aquifer; offering storm protection; and safeguarding biogenetic resources, among others.
All together, these projects degrade and fragment the region, displacing and alienating local communities from their voice and natural resources, and breaking the ecological continuity that sustains this landscape. We observe that several projects have been “fast-tracked” through the designation of National Interest — a classification we consider to betray Portuguese citizens. Their contribution to the country is far from positive.
The irreversible loss of rare habitats, the depletion of the aquifer in an arid region to irrigate golf courses and thousands of holiday homes, the dubious “mini-cities” intended to house the necessary crowds of migrant construction workers in precarious conditions, the privatised or inaccessible beaches, the sacrifice of what little remains of a coastline already beyond its limit of human occupation — these are heavy costs for the Portuguese people, and become scandalous when compared with what is being created: a bargain-priced economy handed to large foreign groups, serving the leisure of a small elite.
Allowing these projects and this extractive model to irreversibly destroy the last great wild coastal expanse of the country is to usurp the future of the next generations; it is to fall into an already lamented mistake — shamefully repeated and unacceptable today. The Dunas Livres Platform intends to stop this mistake.
We demand the full protection of the dunes across the entire Tróia Peninsula, which should already be more widely and assertively covered by nature protection regimes that effectively enforce the Habitats Directive, and the suspension of the construction of further resorts or golf courses beyond those that currently exist — which we know are already more than sufficient. The Tróia Peninsula Urbanisation Plan is a land-use planning instrument that must be revoked due to its total inadequacy to the place and the time in which we live.
We denounce the complete unsustainability and irresponsibility of water consumption by resorts with golf courses from Comporta to Melides. We will not allow exploitation of the aquifer in a region under water stress and so close to the ocean and the saline wedge.
We oppose the false narrative that this is a model of sustainable development. Building on dunes is destroying dunes. Calling “eco-resorts” to projects whose environmental impact is classified as habitat elimination — “negative, direct, certain, permanent, irreversible, strong in magnitude and highly significant” — is fraud.
We want to see uncontrolled tourist expansion curbed along the entire coast of the municipalities of Grândola and Alcácer do Sal, so that tourism and construction do not compromise their true asset: nature.
We call on everyone who wishes to join us for Dunas Livres — for freedom from unsustainable construction; for the future of the next generations; for respect for Portuguese citizens in crucial national decisions; for the defence of a heritage of incalculable value for the world — to sign this Manifesto.
Signed by several organisations and civic movements that join our mission through a platform for Dunas Livres:
