III. Models of Public Coastal Access from Around the World

The following six country case studies illustrate a critical issue or perspective around coastal access. In the United Kingdom, we see how policy has evolved to privilege recreational coastal access use through a comprehensive mapping program. In Mauritius, we examine how colonial legislation is inherited and passed down without input from present day citizens. The Hawaiʻi case demonstrates how Indigenous rights frameworks intersect with modern-day imperialism. In Egypt, we study how ‘global’ coastal policies must be localized and contextualized. Australia’s example shows how private property rights can come into deep conflict with both public access and Indigenous rights. Similarly, the Pakistani case demonstrates how private developers and interests work to limit coastal access, especially in the context of state co-option.

1. The Case of the United Kingdom

• Creates a scalar framework for recreational coastal access from national to local policy and implementation.

• Establishes a technical mapping program that provides a global model to map land use and coastal access.

• Builds upon hundreds of years of legislation to establish coastal access.

This is well illustrated by the example of a coastal walking path, such as the Coast Path in the United Kingdom, a 4,300 kilometer path along the English coast that is scheduled to open in 2021. The path is managed by Natural England, a non-departmental public body sponsored within the United Kingdom’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. (15) The path provides public access to the coastal margin, or the area between the sea and the pathway, and is accessible for day recreation seekers or dedicated thru-hikers. The path expands on existing coastal pathways, and was made possible by several separate pieces of legislation. The National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 established the National Parks Commission, which was later reorganized and renamed Natural England in 2006. The Act also created and maintained public rights of way into the countryside. (16) The Countryside and Rights of Act 2000 (CRoW Act) implemented the “right to roam” on upland and uncultivated areas of England and Wales, giving public right of access to land mapped as open country on registered common land, or “open access land.” These CRoW and Coastal Access regional scale maps were produced over several years. (17) The maps identified ecologically sensitive public areas, including salt marshes and mudflats, safety hazards including steep topography, and private areas including buildings, gardens and agricultural land.

The Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 established an exclusive economic zone (EEZ) around the United Kingdom, and also established the Coast Path as “a route for the whole of the English coast which… passes over land which is accessible to the public.” In addition, the Act created a coastal margin “accessible to the public for the purposes of its enjoyment by them in conjunction with that route or otherwise.” Critically, the act defined “the English coast” to include coastline adjacent to the sea. (18)

While additional legislation helped to shape a pathway to laying the physical route of the Coast Trail, these three acts are keystones to establishing coastal access, and underlie the complex web of governmental agencies, public advocacy and law over 75 years. While the legislative framework for the Coast Path was laid between 1949 and 2021, the physical shape of the coastline changed significantly. The 1953 North Sea flood, 1968 Hurricane, Gale of January 1976, 1978 North Sea storm surge, Great Storm of 1987, 1990 Burns’ Day Storm, 2013 East Coast Tidal Surge and 2017 Hurricane Ophelia, among hundreds of others, all reshaped the coastal margin, impacting the future course of the Coast Path. The frequency, rather than the intricacies, of these events, are important, because they elucidate the challenges in creating updated, consistent baseline maps that accurately represent coastal conditions and inform public coastal access.

While the Coast Path is exclusively within British sovereign territory and does not cross international boundaries, the trail will be affected by anthropogenic climate change at a global scale. Global carbon emissions that drive sea level rise and erratic weather events are experienced locally on shorelines hit by hurricanes with increased strength and landmasses that erode more quickly. At a national scale, the definition of “the English coast” relies on a stable sea level to define what is accessible land, especially in relation to islands and other unique coastal features. The Act defines islands as accessible if they are walkable, even those that are accessible only during certain times or tidal conditions. Sea level rise and erosion will redefine these areas in the near future, threatening the mission of the Coast Path to connect the nation’s coastline. Locally, the path will be moved, and public access will likely be restricted during and in the aftermath of extreme weather events.

To preserve the Coast Path in the United Kingdom requires coordinated decision-making, from global efforts to mitigate climate change and prevent increasing sea level rise, to national affordances for alternative routes to keep the coast connected, and local implementation and maintenance of the trail. This national landscape is connected through time and space to a rich history of coastal access legislation, yet the trail is specifically for recreational users, and the legal framework that establishes coastal access does not include protections for communities who rely on the ocean to support their livelihoods. This form of coastal access framework was exported to various nations that the United Kingdom and other imperialist countries colonized during the eighteenth and nineteenth countries, including the now independent island nation of Mauritius.

2. The Case of the Republic of Mauritius

• Showcases how colonial-era legislation has been transposed onto contemporary nation-states.

• Highlights the need for meaningful consultation with local residents to form coastal access policy.

• Introduces new ideas for environmental and climate change mitigation and management.

The Republic of Mauritius is an independent island nation located in the Indian Ocean, off the southeast coast of the African continent. The island was originally uninhabited, and colonized by several western European imperial powers, including the Netherlands, which seized control of the island in 1598, France, which colonized the island in 1715, and Great Britain, which invaded in 1810. The nation gained independence in 1968, and has been self-governing for the past half century. The country is one of a group of small island developing states (SIDS) that share similar challenges with sustainable development, including their susceptibility to natural disasters and fragile environments. (19)

When Mauritius was decolonized in 1968, the nation adopted a Westminster parliamentary system, modeled on the British system of governance, as well as significant legal frameworks from the countries that colonized the island. The case of Mauritius shows how frameworks for legal access were exported from western European imperialist nations with temperate climates and industrialized economies, and continue to shape public coastal access in the tropical island nation today.

The 1895 Pas Geometriques Act, or “not geometric” Act in English, was some of the first environmental legislation passed on the island, and amended in 1989. The Act is inherited from the French parliament, and makes a strip of beach, called the Pas Geometriques, or “not geometric” Act in English, from the high tide mark to the horizon around the nation publicly accessible. The Act provided the funds to survey these lands, and granted the Mauritian government the right to lease, but not sell, the land and its annexes. Private owners, including residents and hotels, can lease the land, so long as they do not prevent public access. (20)

This Act was expanded with the Beach Authority Act of 2002, which established the Beach Authority in Mauritius and Rodrigues, part of the territory of the Republic of Mauritius, to control and manage public beaches between the high tide and a line 100 meters into the ocean, as declared by the Housing and Lands Minister. (21) The Act governs the 93 public beaches across the nation, though, from the Pas Geometriques Act, the entire Mauritius coastline should be publicly accessible below the high water mark, even in areas where the beach frontage is leased to private property owners.

In practice, the Pas Geometriques Act is rarely followed as intended. Tourism and development pressures along the coast have led to disputes between recreational users and hoteliers, as well as fishermen and developers, who rely on ocean access for their livelihoods. (22) Leasees build impenetrable walls and block off public pathways to coastal access points to prohibit public access. Sea level rise and erosion that move the mean high water level mark inland will exacerbate these existing issues, pushing public coastal space users into private property, without a clear process to mediate these disputes.

Mauritius faces challenges unique to SIDS that are significantly different than those facing continental France in terms of geography and funding. Mauritian residents have put forth new proposals that call for development pushed back from the Pas Geometriques and the development of a resilient coastal green belt along the ring of beaches. (23) A global public coastal access framework must ensure that local voices and legislation are privileged over inherited imperial frameworks as part of the ongoing process of decolonization. While Mauritius gained independence in the twentieth century, the following case of Hawaiʻi explores a colonized territory that is still under imperial control.

3. The Case of Hawaii, USA

• Shows the importance of preserving public access for Indigenous uses.

• Highlights the contradictions in overlaying imperial policy over Indigenous legal frameworks.

• Demonstrates the use of customary rights to safeguard Indigenous practices.

The Hawaiian case demonstrates how states are forced to adapt to enduring apparatuses of imperialism and how Indigenous movements seek to safeguard access to the coastline. This section looks into the history of the Hawaiian Kingdom to understand the origins of public trust in Hawai’i and how subsequent legislative transformations have sought to maintain the doctrine of public trust into the future.

The State of Hawaiʻi is an archipelago of over 100 islands in the Northern Pacific Ocean, but the word Hawaiʻi generally refers to the 8 largest and inhabited islands. Hawaiʻi was first inhabited by Polynesian voyagers, who administered the land through the ahupuaʻa system, a framework of land management that divided the islands in wedge-shaped districts from highland to coast. These ahupuaʻa were administered by a complex hierarchy of chiefs, land managers, and commoners with a profound sense of relationality between the human actors and the natural environment.

After exposure to European contact in 1778, the Hawaiian Islands were catapulted into a series of political and social changes, including the unification of the islands under one political entity, the Hawaiian Kingdom. The privatization of land in the Hawaiian Kingdom began through the Māhele in 1848, which included legislation to assure the public trust of the archipelago’s water resources, including the coastline. It is through this historical precedent that the current public trust doctrine finds its genealogy. (24)

Hawaiʻi presents a unique understanding of the intersection of coastal access, coloniality and Indigenous rights due to its political status and history. An ongoing history of imperialism contributes to distinctive present realities surrounding coastal access in Hawaiʻi. In the 1890s, a series of political machinations led to the illegal annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the United States, a history which has been one of the foundations for calls for the protection of Native Hawaiian civil rights. Modern-day Native Hawaiian activists have advocated for the reinforcement of public trust doctrine as a way to restore traditional usage rights that were previously upheld by the Hawaiian Kingdom. (25)

As such, the public trust doctrine is the overarching ideological apparatus by which coastal access is administered in Hawaiʻi today. As a result of a push in the 1970s for Native Hawaiian civil rights called the Hawaiian Renaissance, the current Hawaiʻi State Constitution was written, enshrining Indigenous rights into the primary legal apparatus of Hawaiʻi. (26) Prior to that, there were ongoing debates, legal cases, and scholarly articles regarding the status of coastal access in Hawaiʻi. The lingering land titles from the Hawaiian Kingdom provided a unique problem in assessing coastal property rights.

Nonetheless, customary fishing rights and gathering practices on the coast of Hawaiʻi are preserved for those of Hawaiian descent, provided the shoreline lies on undeveloped property. (27) The only exceptions to this access are locations directly administered by the United States military. Cases such as these fall under federal law which supersedes the state, thereby overstepping Indigenous rights of Native Hawaiians. Nonetheless, a global framework that reconciles a rights-based approach that privileges Indigenous access and the ownership-based frameworks of the West can serve as a formidable transition state to fully ensuring that the public right to coastal access is maintained. Native Hawaiians today take great advantage of their fishing rights through both subsistence and commercial ventures. The next case study of Egypt shows how fishing takes center stage as a primary driver of coastal access policy.

4. The Case of Egypt

• Highlights the dangers of deploying ‘universal’ development policies without local input.

• Underscores the need for coordinated environmental and economic development that prioritizes existing coastal dwellers.

Egypt links northeast Africa to the Middle East, and is bounded to the north by the Mediterranean Sea, and to the east by the Red Sea. An estimated one million of Egypt’s 100 million citizens are employed in the fishing sector. (28) Fishing technology has been employed and improved for thousands of years along the Red Sea coast. Today, sport fishermen and commercial fishermen alike share the waters, and the fishing economy is separated into an aquaculture sector, which breeds fish including tilapia and mullets in intensive commercial farms, and the capture sector, which fishes lakes and oceans.

Historically, coastal space, including estuaries, lakes and the oceanic coastline, were publicly owned common resources. Access to this common property was privatized throughout the 1970s, based on recommendations from the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). As national environmental policy was developed, the Egyptian government, particularly the Egyptian General Authority for Fish Resources Development (GFARD) utilized USAID’s recommendations to focus on the economic potential and challenges posed by the coastline, including the relationship between population pressure, scarce water resources and limited cultivable land. To reduce the risk of resource shortages, the Egyptian government set out to privatize land, which was sold to commercial fish farming operations that displaced local fishermen, especially those operating a subsistence level. While GFARD imposed a series of regulations, large and powerful government interests easily flouted regulations that ensnared smaller fishing operations with confusing policies and exemptions that put boat owners, fish laborers and their families out of work. (29)

These efforts to respond to overutilization through privatization largely failed. In 2019, Egypt’s General Authority for Fish Resources Development (GFARD) imposed a 9 month ban on commercial fishing in the Red Sea due to depletion. (30)

National policy focused on resource scarcity failed to take into account the complex local interactions of small-scale fishermen who depend on public coastal access for their livelihoods.

5. The Case of Australia

• Includes a framework for Indigenous coastal access.

• Is framed around two kinds of boundaries: dynamic and static, that account for processes of erosion and deposition, but are still hotly contested by coastal users.

Much like the case of Mauritius and Hawaiʻi, the coastline is held in public trust. As such, this case study will provide an additional insight into how climate change and sea level rise can cause conflict for different stakeholders where public trust doctrine meets private property rights. In addition, Australia has a prominent Indigenous rights movement that has influenced attempts to address policy around the coastline and access to it.

Historically, the coastline was categorized as Crown Land, imbuing public access to it. However, issues surrounding access to the beach have been exacerbated by changing tides and climate change. As the tide rises, the property line changes, further demonstrating deficiencies in an ownership based approach. (31)

The primary point of contention in Australia in regards to this issue lies in the distinction between “fixed” and “ambulatory” boundaries. “Ambulatory” boundaries, which operate under ancient common law precedents, allow for property owners to claim more land on the shoreline as sand collects on the beach. Multiple cases of this occurring in Australia has led scholars and policymakers to consider ways to ensure a public right to access the shoreline, without infringing on property rights. (32) As such, maintaining this ownership based approach undermines attempts to secure public rights to the beach.

Further, attempts to prevent the erosion of shoreline and the accompanying loss of property, some owners have attempted to build seawalls, which have been hotly contested. According to John Corkill, there is no legal way for owners to contend with the changing tides to maintain the size of their property. Any land claimed by rising sea levels reverts to Crown Land and is held in public trust. (33)

Additionally, like Hawaiʻi, notions of Indigenous rights to the coast for cultural practice color the debates around legal access to the coast. Through the Native Title Act of 1993, Aboriginal people in Australia can invoke inherited rights to land, which includes access to the sea, as confirmed by the Croker Island (Yamirr) case of 2001. Aboriginal rights to certain activities, however, can vary between the jurisdictions of Australian law. Despite recommendations made towards achieving a national framework for assessing coastal rights for Indigenous peoples, there exists no overarching approach for the country.

Those who wish to create a global framework should seek to understand the failures and successes of Australian coastal policy. In regards to addressing climate change, an ownership-based framework creates friction between owners and other citizens as high water marks change constantly. Despite that, successful attempts at maintaining coastal access for Indigenous people through inherited rights is a valuable example of marrying Western and Indigenous approaches to the coast. However, this framework is not completely fleshed out and has yet to be tested in regards to securing access for all stakeholders. (34)

6. The Case of Pakistan

• Highlights the need for strong and coherent federal policy.

• Shows the potential for developers to take control of public resources without comprehensive regulation.

The coastlines of Pakistan stretch over 990km across the arid and semi-arid climates of the Sindh and Balochistan provinces. Otherwise dotted sparsely with mangrove forests and small fishing communities, settlement along the coastline is heavily dominated in the mega-city of Karachi which lies in the deltas of the Indus, Lyari, and Malir rivers. Formerly the site of the largest arid climate mangroves in the world, Karachi has since become a sprawling urban and industrial center which typifies issues around coastal access in Pakistan. Indeed, with Pakistan lacking any unified or comprehensive framework around its coastline, the fate of its coastal access has been a highly contested and contingent process, associated closely with localized issues around urbanization and mega ‘development’ projects across the coast.

The fate of Karachi has been deeply intertwined with coastal access, from its very nature as a port city, to the beach providing one of the last multi-class, multi-ethnic public spaces in the region, or being a source of income for its fishing communities. However, the coastline has faced increasing deterioration and ecological neglect as a result of heavy pollution, untreated sewage disposal into the sea, destruction of mangroves, and a swarthe of other issues. In particular, unsustainable land reclamations and constructions have posed the most significant threat to coastal access, with new high-profile residential and commercial projects, such as the DHA’s Waterfront Development Project, enclosing public beaches for private use. This issue of land reclamation and ‘ocean sprawl’ (35) has been particularly potent across Asia, where the intersecting logics of commercialization,‘aesthetic’ development, and lax regulations and state capacity have worked to reinforce unequal power dynamics into unequal coastal access.

While there have been notable attempts by civil society to challenge these development projects, such as the ‘Sahil Bachao Coalition’, these have been limited in the face of state co-option into large commercial projects. State protection of coastal access has been otherwise limited and ad-hoc, whether in the form of temporary judicial stays or irregularly enforced requirements of Environmental Impact Assessments, reflecting the overall lack of coherent policy frameworks and the lack of a clear and single responsible authority. In this way, the case of Karachi has demonstrated that in lieu of state incapacity and co-option, the strengthening of civil society is crucial to maintaining coastal access.

Indeed, this dynamic can be seen elsewhere across the Pakistani coast, particularly in the mega-development projects in Balochistan. The commercial environment created by the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, centered around the Balochi port-city of Gwadar, has meant an environment of securitization and land acquisitions (36) across the coastline - preventing access for local communities, and particularly for fishermen. Altogether, there is a requirement for strong and simplified coastal governance, which has been currently limited by poor coordination and planning between overlapping government departments.