Photo courtesy of UC Irvine's School of Social Ecology
Originally from Liberia, Mohammed W. Bah is a Ph.D. student in Urban and Environmental Planning and Policy at the University of California, Irvine. His research interests include climate adaptation, environmental justice, environmental governance, and environmental decision-making in the Global South. Earlier this year, he joined the Surfrider Foundation’s Coasts & Climate Initiative team as an intern for the summer. What follows are his reflections from his ten-week program studying Southern California’s coastline.
Researching Coastal Policy Across the Country
A major part of my summer focused on Surfrider’s 2026 State of the Beach Report. I researched legislative and policy developments across U.S. coastal states from January 2026 onward to see how they fit the established coastal policy criteria of sediment management, coastal armoring, coastal development, and sea-level-rise and coastal-hazard planning.
Coastal states approach these challenges very differently. A policy that makes sense in California may look very different in Florida, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, or Hawaiʻi because physical coastlines, governance structures, development pressures, and political contexts differ. After completing research for different regions, I met with Surfrider’s regional staff to discuss my findings. Those conversations were particularly valuable because they moved the work beyond what I could find in legislative databases. Regional staff understood the history behind policies, campaigns happening on the ground, and nuances that were not always apparent in my initial research.
Seeing Coastal Adaptation on the Ground
Some of my most memorable experiences were in the field. At San Onofre, I joined Coastal Adaptation Manager Alex Ferron Mignogna and visited areas connected to Surfrider’s ongoing coastal resilience work. I learned more about the dune restoration project at San Onofre State Beach and visited San Clemente State Beach, where Surfrider is advocating for nature-based solutions rather than the continued use of hard shoreline armoring to protect the coastline and the rail corridor. Seeing the site firsthand helped me understand the tradeoffs between relying on traditional hard infrastructure and pursuing approaches that can protect critical infrastructure while preserving the natural coastline.
Another important visit took me to Surfers’ Point in Ventura. I met with Paul Jenkin and learned about the managed retreat project that has evolved over decades. What fascinated me was not only the project itself, but how long it took to become what it is today. Its evolution demonstrated the persistence required to implement ambitious coastal adaptation projects and reminded me that projects we later describe as “successful” often have long histories of negotiation, setbacks, advocacy, and incremental progress behind them.
From Observing Restoration to Participating in It
One of my primary projects during the internship was developing a case study of the Hueneme Beach Park Dune Restoration Project. I reviewed project documents and monitoring data, spoke with project leads, and traced how the project moved from an idea to a volunteer-powered restoration effort.
Then I had the opportunity to experience the project myself. I joined Joan Tharp, Lead for the Ormond Beach Program–Port Hueneme Dune Restoration at a restoration event at Hueneme Beach Park with more than 25 volunteers. Some had learned about the event through Surfrider communications. Others came through community groups or with friends. Some were repeat volunteers who had developed a connection to the project. I spoke with several participants about why they continued showing up. They told me they enjoyed giving back to their community, spending time with other people, staying connected to their local environment, and contributing to the restoration of a coastline affected by erosion.
What stayed with me just as much, however, was the work behind the work. Volunteers may provide the labor, but someone, like a lead, still has to create the conditions that allow that labor to become meaningful. It requires leadership, preparation, coordination, technical knowledge, partnerships, funding, and people willing to give substantial amounts of their own time.
Connecting Policy, People, and Place
The legislative research taught me how states are responding differently to coastal hazards and climate change. Conversations with regional staff showed me the importance of local and institutional knowledge when interpreting policy. Organizational and coalition meetings exposed me to the complexity of nonprofit advocacy and stakeholder engagement. The case study taught me how funding, permitting, technical expertise, municipal partnerships, and volunteers come together to move a restoration project forward. The field visits allowed me to see many of the issues I had been reading and writing about.
Together, these experiences reinforced something increasingly important to my own work: climate adaptation is ultimately about more than projects and policies. It is about people, institutions, relationships, and places.
A dune restoration plan may be scientifically sound, but someone still has to secure funding, obtain permits, build community support, organize volunteers, and sustain the work. A managed retreat project may eventually become a model for others, but getting there can take years of persistence. A state may adopt a promising coastal policy, but understanding its significance requires knowing how it is interpreted and implemented locally.
Taking the Experience Forward
I began the internship hoping to gain practical experience in coastal adaptation and better understand how the work I study as a PhD student happens outside. I leave with that, but also with a greater appreciation for the people who make this work possible. I came to appreciate how different people contribute in different ways to this work, and how local environmental stewardship can grow when people are given meaningful opportunities to participate in shaping and caring for the places where they live.
As I return to my doctoral research, those experiences will stay with me. They have given me a more grounded understanding of coastal adaptation, not merely as something governments plan or researchers study, but as something people negotiate, advocate for, fund, build, maintain, and continually adapt.
What surprised me most was how much of coastal adaptation happens through the slow, often unseen work of building relationships, navigating institutions, and sustaining community involvement. Perhaps that is my biggest takeaway from these ten weeks: resilient coastlines are not built by one policy, one organization, or one project. They are built through sustained relationships between people, communities, institutions, and the environments they are working to protect.