Marine and coastal ecosystem restoration for climate change adaptation in the Caribbean (Guadaloupe, French Oversea region)

Guadeloupe's coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass meadows provide coastal defence against sea level rise, storms and erosion but are degrading: IFREMER monitoring recorded windward-coast coral cover falling from 30% (2007) to 15% (2019), and from 28% to 15% (2002-2019) at the Grand Cul-de-sac Marin project site.

The LIFE Adapt'Island project, led by the Grand Port Maritime de la Guadeloupe with Pilot4Dev and France Nature Environnement Guadeloupe, aims to restore ecological connections between coral reefs, mangroves and seagrass meadows, targeting rehabilitation of 45,000 m2 of coral reef, 45,000 m2 of seagrass beds and 80,000 m2 of mangroves, alongside civil-society engagement.

Coral restoration used fragmentation and spawning-collection techniques across two underwater nurseries; mangrove restoration involved excavating ~892 m3 of soil and replanting over 100 red mangrove seedlings at Jarry via new tree nurseries; seagrass restoration combined an eco-friendly boat-mooring zone with cultivation and transplantation of Thalassia testudinum seedlings, alongside school and community awareness campaigns building on the earlier Cayoli (2016) and Cayoli Junior (2017) programmes.

The project received an EU (LIFE) funding contribution of EUR 2,532,707. Early results showed low survival rates for some seagrass and coral transplants due to storms, predation, disease and mooring damage, prompting a revised approach that paired restoration with direct protection measures (e.g. eco-moorings), which the case study reports as improving outcomes for seagrass and mangroves.

Success factors include the extensive stakeholder network built through awareness campaigns and the pivot from restoration-only to combined protection-and-restoration. Limiting factors include unpredictable environmental variables (storms, predation, disease), partly irreversible ecosystem loss in the short term, and high logistical and cost challenges.