With over €840 million in European funding, Romania launched a massive project in 2013 to combat the erosion of its Black Sea coast, one of the most vulnerable in Europe. The plan initially envisioned the use of nature-based solutions.

The most recent phases have seen a succession of much more invasive interventions, with breakwaters and large-scale beach nourishment using sands other than the original ones. These are forced choices, according to the Romanian government, in a context of growing climate and economic uncertainty. For environmentalists and researchers, however, this represents a missed opportunity for a change of pace.

An advancing sea

For decades, much of the sediment that feeds the Black Sea beaches has been retained by dams built on its rivers, primarily the Danube and Dnieper. Once they reach the basin, their passage is impeded by piers, ports, and all sorts of other engineering structures.

Today, nature is paying the price, made worse by the rising sea levels induced by climate change (about 15 centimeters in the last 50 years) and subsidence, or the sinking of land, in river deltas.

800 kilometres  of the Black Sea coastline (one-fifth of the total) retreating by more than one meter per year. The most affected areas are the river deltas and the low-lying coasts of the northern shore, from the Odessa area to some parts of Crimea and Russia, through the Danube Delta and Romania, one of the most exposed countries.

Vulnerable Romania

43% of the Romanian coastline is classified as "highly" sensitive to erosion, while 37% is already receding. While the most extreme phenomena – up to 8 meters per year, with peaks of 20 – are recorded in the Delta, the most severe impacts are concentrated in the central and southern areas.

Over half a million people live here, and the area is home to major ports such as Midia, Mangalia, and especially Constanta, the largest on the Black Sea, whose importance has further increased after the partial closure of Odessa.

The southern coast is also the heart of Romanian tourism: over eight million visitors flock to the beaches of Mamaia, Eforie, and Saturn-Mangalia, on beaches that have become smaller every year. In Constanta, even the cliff overlooking one of the city’s symbols – the famous Art Nouveau casino – was showing signs of subsidence before recent consolidation work.

Ever since the 1960s, during the communist regime, erosion was a pressing problem, and efforts were made to contain it with heavy engineering: walls, transverse barriers, breakwaters, and artificial reefs. However, the barriers not only marred the landscape but also further disrupted the circulation of sediment, aggravating erosion in unprotected areas.

In the 1990s, after the fall of the regime, the problem was virtually ignored. It was only with Romania’s rapprochement with the European Union that it began to address the issue again, with a paradigm shift.

The promise of nature-based solutions

In the early 2000s, with the support of international partners – including the Japan International Cooperation Agency – the Romanian authorities resumed addressing the problem of coastal erosion, ultimately drafting a Master Plan in 2012 designed to address the entire coastline in a comprehensive manner.

In line with European policies, the document emphasized nature-based solutions : strategies that work "with, and not against, natural processes," favoring "soft" interventions such as beach nourishment with compatible sands, distributed via currents, or vegetation to strengthen dunes. Hard interventions were envisaged only as a last resort.

The first phase of the project, launched with European funding, involved five stretches between Mamaia and Eforie. With an investment of €170 million, the beaches were expanded by 60 hectares through beach nourishment and submerged barriers. Despite some disputes over the procurement, the works have generally complied with the Master Plan.

A missed turning point

With the second phase , funded in the 2014-2020 period (now nearing completion), the project took a sudden turn. With over 30 new transverse barriers, kilometers of artificial reefs, and more than 220 hectares of reconstructed beaches, the works appear far removed from "nature-based solutions." The budget has also ballooned to €840 million, triple the initial forecast.

Due to the pandemic, the works have suffered delays, forcing them to be spread out in phases and postponed to the 2021-2027 EU program, losing several hundred million euros from the previous funding cycle.

The characteristics of the "new direction" are evident even to non-experts. In Mamaia – the country’s most famous seaside resort, once renowned for its golden sands – the plan called for widening the beach by between 50 and 110 meters. In some stretches, however, the beach has been widened to almost 300 meters.

Further south, in Costinești, where gentle hills slope down to the beach – almost idyllic, were it not for a strip of hotels that have sprung up haphazardly over the years – the Master Plan recommended no intervention, also to avoid altering the currents in a Natura 2000 area on the cliffs south of the town. Nonetheless, during 2024, concrete groynes tens of meters long were built, reaching almost to the shore of the Evangelia shipwreck, an austere symbol of this stretch of coast.

A hail of criticism

For many scholars, the approach adopted in the second phase of the project appears more oriented towards the past than the future. "They’re repeating the same mistakes they made fifty years ago," comments Tătui, an expert in coastal dynamics at the University of Bucharest. "By building all these barriers, they’re interrupting the currents and trapping sediment. What’s worse," he adds, "is that many of the companies involved, based in Western Europe, haven’t used these practices in their home countries for years."

A group of researchers from Ovidius University in Constanta analyzed the perception of the coast’s new face among visitors and tourism operators following the expansion of Mamaia Beach.

The results are disastrous: over 65% of those interviewed were dissatisfied, both because of the aesthetics (the location was known for its fine, golden sand, but the new sand is coarse, dark, and full of sharp shell fragments) and because of its accessibility.

The new seabed, in fact, becomes deep very quickly, resulting in a diminished perception of safety, especially among families with children. Many hoteliers feared that the changed appearance of the beach might push tourists to other destinations.

The issue came to national attention in 2022, when the television program România, te iubesc dedicated a lengthy investigation   to the topic.

Meanwhile, among residents and regular visitors to coastal resorts, the idea has spread that the excessive expansion of beaches could serve to legalize existing buildings too close to the sea, or to facilitate new construction.

The official response: "there were no alternatives"

The Romanian Water Agency, contacted by OBCT and the independent Romanian newspaper PressOne, dismisses all criticisms, starting with accusations of "betrayal": the Master Plan should have been understood "as a strategic framework, not an executive project."

Behind the radical change of direction lies the need to "balance several factors." Among the first, one can read between the lines, is the very nature of European funding. This "ends once the project is completed, [after which] the costs and operational logistics will be entirely borne by the Romanian state."

For this reason, they continue, "we cannot embrace certain concepts that, however correct, would require us to rely on unavailable technologies and huge funding, for which we have no guarantees, especially since we are referring to such a long time horizon, which makes any financial and logistical forecasting of the evolution of our institutional capacity impossible." Rigid structures would therefore be "a guarantee of long-term protection, even without maintenance."

Regarding environmental impacts, the agency states that compensation has been taken into account and that "the effects of the dams are localized" and do not significantly alter large-scale currents. It also assures, however, that "the final solutions were decided during the technical design phase, involving local experts and scholars."

Nature-based solutions, in fact, aim by definition to be sustainable and long-lasting, while more robust ones (at least those of the past) have proven otherwise. It is true that most of the projects built with these criteria were completed too recently to be completely certain. One thing is now certain: Romania will not be the one to find out.

This article is published as part of the Cohesion4Climate project, co-funded by the European Union. The EU is in no way responsible for the information or views expressed within the project; the sole responsibility lies with OBCT.