Environment: 70 thousand students take action for the "Guardians of the Coast"

25 July 2024 Last Updated: 25 July 2024

Over 4,300 schools, 70 thousand students and 5,600 teachers were involved in initiatives that include the monitoring of 92 stretches of beaches in the 2022/23 school year alone, detecting environmental parameters in approximately 2 thousand sampling points, as reported by the project Guardiani della Costa, promoted since 2017 by the Costa Crociere Foundation and conducted for the technical-scientific part by ENEA, the Aquarium Foundation of Genoa, the School of Robotics, Civicamente and the Ligurian Marine Observatory for Fisheries and the Environment (OLPA ).

The results of the monitoring of the beaches conducted in the last school year were presented on the occasion of National Sea Day to raise awareness in schools about the importance of knowing the marine environment, protecting the biodiversity of the coasts and the sea and curbing pollution and waste.

The high school students conducted actual coastal surveys based on 3 parameters: monitoring of vegetation and coastal dunes to assess the natural state of Italian beaches; beachcombing, the activity of searching for materials deposited by the sea on the beaches; monitoring of microplastics. The first activity highlighted that 50% of the stretches of beach analysed exhibit good natural conditions, over 25% are characterized by a total absence of typical plant species, 16% show clear signs of decline in dune vegetation. The beachcombing activity revealed the predominance of marine waste of anthropic origin among the beached materials, in particular plastic, with an average amount of 24 small debris per square meter, confirming the worrying abundance of plastic debris in our seas.

“Italy is a wonderful country, thanks to its culture, historic cities, landscapes and many other beautiful features, including its 8,300 km of coasts and coastlines that are unique in the world, although very fragile and often threatened”, pointed out Anna Giordano, Senior Program Management Officer of Costa Crociere Foundation. “Guardiani della Costa is a project that combines the commitment of young people in both the social and environmental world, educating them on the uniqueness and vulnerability of the Italian coasts. On the occasion of National Sea Day, we want to share the results of this project, active since 2017, and invite new schools to join in to raise awareness among a greater number of young people and the entire community about the coastal heritage of our beautiful country".

ENEA, in its role as scientific partner, contributed to the creation of new training contents like handouts, video webcasts and live webinars; it planned numerous scientific data collection activities on the beaches and developed new sampling protocols that combine scientific rigor and monitoring.

“The 1,925 survey points where the students operated are a very representative sample, almost impossible to obtain from a single scientific team in a single season”, pointed out Ivo Rossetti at the ENEA Laboratory of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services of the Marine Environment Research Center of Santa Teresa (Lerici, La Spezia). “The quality of the data is also positive. In fact, the new protocols, easier to apply thanks to illustrated survey forms, have made it possible to obtain data with statistical accuracy between 67 and 80%, a very respectable result, providing greater interpretability and the possibility to extract a significant amount of information on the ecological satatus of the beaches analysed”, said Rossetti.

The novelty of the project this year is a fourth data collection activity based on the photointerpretation of the coastal landscape through satellite images, to enable schools far from the coast to participate.

Guardiani della Costa is supported by the Snam Foundation and Europ Assistance under the patronage of the Ministry of the Environment and Energy Security (MASE), the Ministry of Infrastructure and Transport (MIT) and the Port Authority Corps - Coast Guard.