Privacy Notice

Updated: October 7th, 2024

1. Introduction

The European Seagrass Restoration Alliance (“ESRA”) is committed to maintaining your trust by protecting your personal data. This Privacy Notice explains how we collect, use, share and protect personal data. 

ESRA is committed to ensuring that your privacy is protected and will process your personal data in a transparent and lawful way. Any personal data you provide to ESRA, including when you use this website, will only be used in accordance with this Privacy Notice.


ESRA may change this statement from time to time by updating this page.


2. Personal Data

Personal data is any information relating to an identified or identifiable natural person. Your name, address, phone number and bank account number are examples of personal data.

ESRA collects several types of personal data:

  • Contact Information, including name, mailing address, business or company information, telephone number, or email address.
  • Information about your interactions with ESRA, such as data collected when you:
    • Use our websites, including information collected when using cookies and other technologies; and
    • Opt in or out of receiving news and information from ESRA.
  • Technical information when you visit our website such as information about web browser, operating system or time the site was accessed. This information is recorded automatically when you access our website.

3. How We Collect Personal Data

We collect your personal data from you when you:

  • Participate in projects, working groups, or other similar interactions, coordinated by ESRA;
  • Provide your personal data to ESRA to be included in the practitioner database;
  • Submit an inquiry through the website or by another means to ESRA; or
  • When you sign up to receive news and information from ESRA.

We also collect information when you visit our website. More information about the use of cookies and other tracking technologies can be found in the “Cookies and other tracking technologies” section below.

4. How We Use Personal Data

We use personal data to:

  • Operate ESRA in furtherance of its goals;
  • Administer projects, working groups, and other collaborative efforts;
  • Maintain the ESRA expert database forums;
  • Deliver news and information to those who sign up to receive it;
  • Respond to your inquiries; and
  • To operate this website.

5. Purposes and Legal Basis for Processing, Including Legitimate Interests

ESRA only processes personal data when we have a legal basis for the processing, as follows:

  • Legitimate interest: To meet our legitimate business interest such as to develop and improve our projects, partnerships, and defined operations, support ESRA conservation operations, secure our systems, assets, and personnel.
  • Legal obligation: To comply with applicable laws and regulations.
  • Contractual obligation: To perform or fulfill our obligations under a contract or other agreement with you or the organization with which you are affiliated.
  • Consent: We may process personal data based upon the provision of your consent to include you in requested databases, working groups or similar projects, to respond to your requests or similar inquiries, and to send you requested news and information. You may withdraw your consent at any time by contacting us using the information in the Contact Us section below.

We may also process your personal data for the purposes of our own legitimate interests or for the legitimate interests of others, provided that processing does not and shall not outweigh your rights and freedoms. In particular, we will process your personal data as needed to:

  • Protect you, us or others from threats (such as security threats or fraud);
  • Enable or administer our organization, such as for reporting and conservation outreach; and 
  • Understand and improve our partner and other relationships generally.

6. Why Personal Data Is Disclosed to Others?

We may share your personal data with:

  • Fellow participants of or partners in a ESRA project when you have chosen to participate in such;
  • Visitors of the ESRA website if you have chosen to allow ESRA to publish your contact information; and
  • External service providers, who help us operate ESRA and its projects, including this website, who are required to protect all personal data.

ESRA may disclose your personal data without your permission to the extent required to do so by European Union or National law, in connection with any legal proceedings or prospective legal proceedings, and in order to exercise or defend its legal rights.

We will not sell, distribute, or lease your personal data to third parties unless required by law to do so.

7. Online Privacy

When you visit our website, we may collect information by automated means through our external hosting service provider, using technologies such as cookies, pixel tags, browser analysis tools, server logs, and web beacons.

In some cases, the information we collect is only used in a non-identifiable way. For example, we use information we collect about all website users to optimize our websites and to understand website traffic patterns. We do not use this information to profile you or target our advertisments.

Cookies

Cookies are small text files. Normally, these are downloaded from the websites you visit to your computer or mobile device. This enables the website to recognize your device when you click through the page (possibly even when you return at a later point in time) in order to make the pages easier for you and to personalize them.

The following terms can help you to understand and control cookies:

  • Cookies that are installed on your device by the organization operating the website are called “first party cookies”.
  • Cookies that are installed on your device via the website you are visiting are called “third-party cookies”. An example would be a cookie that was installed by a company for website analysis in order to provide the website operator with information about the number of visitors to his website.
  • So-called “permanent cookies” remain on your device even if you close your internet browser. They are activated every time you visit the website that generated this cookie.  For example, a website may use a “permanent cookie” to remember your login details so you do not have to enter them every time you visit the website.
  • “Session cookies”, on the other hand, are not stored permanently and are normally used to serve a website. For example, a session cookie may allow a user to switch from one page to the next without having to log in again. As soon as you close your browser, all session cookies will be deleted from your computer.
  • “Flash cookies” are installed by websites that contain media (e.g., video clips). Adobe Flash software is required for this. This allows content to be downloaded faster and information to be saved such as information that the content was accessed from your device.

You have the option to set up your browser in such a manner that you will be notified any time cookies are placed and to permit the acceptance of cookies only in specific cases. You may also exclude the acceptance of cookies in certain cases or in general or activate the delete function for the automatic eradication of cookies when the browser closes. If cookies are deactivated, the functions of this website may be limited.

In the event that third-party cookies are used or if cookies are used for analytical purposes, we will separately notify you in conjunction with this Data Protection Policy and, if applicable, ask for your consent.

Other tracking technologies

When you visit our website, our external hosting service provider automatically collects and stores the following information:

  • The type and version of browser you use;
  • The operating system you use;
  • The referrer URL;
  • The hostname of the accessing computer;
  • The time of the server inquiry; and
  • Your device IP address or device ID.

This data is not merged with other data sources.

Your options with cookies and tracking technologies

There is a possibility that your browsing patterns will be statistically analyzed when your visit this website. Such analyses are performed primarily with cookies and with what we refer to as analysis programs. As a rule, the analyses of your browsing patterns are conducted anonymously and cannot be traced back to you.

You have the option to object to such analyses or you can prevent their performance by not using certain tools. For detailed information about the tools and about your options to object, please consult our Data Protection Declaration below.

8. Information Security and Data Retention

ESRA is committed to ensuring that your personal data is secure. In order to prevent unauthorized access or disclosure, we have put in place appropriate technical and organizational measures to safeguard and secure the personal data we process.

ESRA will not store your data longer than necessary for the purpose for which we have processed your data. How long we retain your personal data depends on the type of data and the purpose for which we process it. 

9. International Transfer

Your personal data may be transferred to, stored at, or processed in other countries, including the United States or otherwise outside the European Economic Area, which may not provide equivalent levels of data protection to your home jurisdiction. 

We will take steps to ensure that your personal data receives an adequate level of protection in the jurisdictions in which we process it, including through appropriate written data processing terms and/or data transfer agreements. For transfers from the EU, United Kingdom (“UK”), or Switzerland, to the US, ESRA relies on adequacy decisions by the EU Commission or putting in place standard contractual clauses as approved by the European Commission.

10. Your Rights 

The European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation provides individuals with certain rights with respect to your personal data. ESRA extends these rights to all individuals and comply with reasonable requests. These rights are detailed below:

  • Right to Access: You have the right to request ESRA provide you with a copy of your personal data. Note that we may have to contact you to verify the authenticity of any communications received by us that indicate they have been sent by you.
  • Right to Rectification (Correction): You have the right to request ESRA to correct any information about you that you believe is incorrect. You also have the right to request ESRA to complete information about you that you believe is incorrect. We will take reasonable steps to check its accuracy and correct it.
  • Right to Erasure (Deletion): You have the right to request ESRA to erase your personal data, under certain conditions. If you want to ask us to delete it, please contact us at the address below
  • Right to Restrict Processing: You have the right to request ESRA to restrict the processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.  We may sometimes be able to restrict the use of your personal data for only certain things, such as legal claims or to exercise legal rights. In this situation, we would not use or share your information in other ways while it is restricted.
  • Right to Object to Processing: You have the right to object to ESRA’s processing of your personal data, under certain conditions.
  • Right to Data Portability: You have the right to request ESRA to transfer your personal data that we have collected to another organization, or directly to you, under certain conditions.
  • Right to Lodge a Complaint: If you are dissatisfied with our handling of any privacy complaints you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority for your country or region, or where an alleged infringement of applicable data protection law occurs.

To exercise the above rights, contact us at [email protected]    

11. Plug-ins and Tools

Our website uses plugins from social networks (Twitter, Google, and YouTube) to share content.

Every time you visit a website on our website that has such a plugin, the plugin causes the browser you are using to load and display the visual representation of the plugin from the social network server. The social network server is informed which specific website of our website you are currently visiting and other data such as your IP address is transmitted.

We have no influence on the amount of data that the social network collects with the help of this plugin. Please refer to the data protection information of the respective social network for information:

Twitter

Instagram

LinkedIn

Google

12. Contact Us 

If you have any questions or complaints about our privacy practices or if you would like help exercising your privacy rights, please contact our Controller:


Dr Richard Lilley
ESRA Secretariat
Atlasstraat 33, Zuidhorn, 9801VA, Netherlands

Phone: +31 (0)647023162

E-mail: [email protected]

If you are dissatisfied with our handling of any privacy complaints you have the right to lodge a complaint with a data protection authority for your country or region, or where an alleged infringement of applicable data protection law occurs.