Seagrass restoration in a governance vacuum: the limits of civil society-led action

Seagrass restoration is increasingly recognised as an important component of coastal ecosystem recovery. While community participation is widely promoted as a key factor in restoration success, less attention has been paid to the role of government in enabling restoration to scale beyond individual projects. This perspective examines seagrass restoration in Northern Ireland during a decade marked by repeated periods of suspension of the devolved Northern Ireland Executive and political instability. We show how NGOs, researchers, and community stakeholders maintained momentum by generating evidence, advocating for restoration, engaging stakeholders and implementing pilot interventions. These activities established important foundations for recovery but did not develop into a coordinated restoration programme comparable to those emerging elsewhere in the United Kingdom. Restoration remained constrained by the absence of long-term funding, strategic coordination, regulatory support, and government-led action to address the drivers of habitat decline. The Northern Ireland experience highlights both the value and the limits of civil society-led restoration. Civil society can sustain the foundations of restoration during periods of reduced state capacity, but scaling restoration ultimately depends on government enablement.