Image Credits: Henrique Casinhas
Fotografia: Henrique Casinhas
To celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Ericeira World Surfing Reserve (EWSR) several structuring actions will be developed for the Ericeira region, in the municipality of Mafra, and for Portugal.
The EWSR turns 10 on October 14, 2021. To celebrate this important event, the Ericeira WSR+10 event will take place over several months and will include multidisciplinary initiatives, from conferences to formations, through scientific studies and workshops, promoting sustainability through surfing.
This project has the general objective of promoting health through the practice of sustainable sports in the communities, by raising awareness about the importance of outdoor sports within an environmentally sustainable community.
The event will have some of its most remarkable moments between the 13th and 17th of October 2021, with an event that will have the presence of 11 delegates that will bring to Ericeira about two hundred representatives from ten countries, among the European partners involved, and a Study about the Impact of the Reserve in Ericeira over the past 10 years.
The financial support of the European Commission (which is the main financier of the project, with 80% of the total value) is complemented by the support of the municipality of Mafra, partner which is responsible for a contribution of 20% of the funds.
The Ericeira World Surfing Reserve is the only one existing on the European continent, integrating a global network under the radar of Save the Waves Coalition, an international association that created the World Surfing Reserves program with the aim of preserving and promoting coastal regions with waves of unmatched quality – in Ericeira it is a coastal strip of four kilometers that includes seven waves of unique characteristics (Pedra Branca, Reef, Ribeira d’Ilhas, Cave, Crazy Left, Coxos and São Lourenço), the respective landscapes and ecosystems.
Ericeira World Surfing Reserve+10
To expose the reality within Europe’s first World Surfing Reserve, Ericeira, since it was awarded by Save the Waves Coalition, the organization that backs this kind of statues attribution, by using it a case study to support the training to be done during the main event and help other surf cities and World Surfing Reserves to do the same.
To raise awareness of sustainability through outdoor sport as a path to the development of a sustainable community in Ericeira, based in two major ways: sustainability awareness and health-enhancing physical activity awareness. Both are correlated to each other by inclusive parameters such as education, health, and values. Awareness and education bring knowledge.
Surfing is for itself a sport activity that lays on the idyllic of healthy experience in absolute communion with nature elements that potentialize the enhancing of the physical activity, by promoting mind and body wellbeing. It depends on Nature to exist, so it is evident that environmental ethics are implicit in surfing. It is pretended to use it as a basis for sustainable surfing community development.
A cooperative network between cities where there is a strategy to develop surfing as an activity to generate wealth.
Save The Waves Coalition (STW) is an international non-profit organization that awards World Surfing Reserve, working in alliance with related organizations, dedicated to protecting surfing ecosystems.
Ericeira Surf Clube was recently featured in a webinar promoted by the Portuguese Institute of Sport and Youth (IPDJ – Instituto Português do Desporto e Juventude) about the good practices of sport clubs under a European community program.
Next year Ericeira will once again host a World Surf League (WSL) Challenger Series event.
The stage of maximum status of the world qualifying circuit is scheduled for October 2021 (between the 5th and 10th, more precisely) in Ribeira d’Ilhas.
Ericeira Surf Clube (ESC) recently saw a European application for the Erasmus + Sport 2020 program approved by the European Commission to celebrate the tenth anniversary of Ericeira’s World Surfing Reserve – EWSR.
Ericeira World Surfing Reserve
The “Guardian of the Ericeira World Surf Reserve” makes the collective call for environmental preservation: everyone – in and out of water – we are guardians of this unique heritage that is waves. The sculpture is installed in the Ribeira d’Ilhas viewpoint, the most media and cosmopolitan of the seven unique waves that constitute the first Reserve in Europe and the second in the world.
